US strikes deal w/ Taliban to remove troops from Afghanistan (1 Viewer)

SaulGoodmanEsq said:

Like... maybe in a hundred years... It took more than that for the U.S. to allow woman to vote.

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I think it would be worth keeping 3000 soldiers there for 100 years, since it provided a base of operations to deal with regional terrorists. Their purpose would be more immediately important than the purpose of the troops in Europe. I would've reduced that presence, before eliminating the presence in Afghanistan.

samiam5211 said:

yea, it's easy for people to be against a bad outcome, those people have no idea what they want though.

No one wants this, but no one has any suggestions as to what an alternative is. Most people would oppose anything we do with regard to Afganistan, because there isn't any option that results in a good outcome.

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I think it's some combination of the powerful images, unexpected swiftness of the Taliban takeover, and probably people wanting to disassociate themselves from the blame for something they just previously supported.

And partisanship ... Lest we forget the partisanship.

SystemShock said:

You and I have very different definitions of "working".

I rest my case.

No, it's not.

How long does it take to train a "decent fighting force"?

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So you don't consider thousands of Afghan troops dying fighting the Taliban fighting for their country? I suppose you can say they died for a paycheck, but that paycheck was earned by fighting for Afghanistan. You can take the cynical attitude that it had nothing to do with their country, but I don't believe that, because they could've left the country to do something else that was a lot less dangerous, or they could've joined the Taliban. By things were working, I mean the U.S. troops were filling in the non-combat roles that the Afghans were not good at yet. Most of their army didn't have that much experience. We have soldiers with over 30 years of experience leading our troops, and many have combat experience. Also, our troops are professionals. I'm sure there were many good Afghan soldiers, but they were still a very inexperienced force. Another 20 years might've done the trick. That may also have been enough to solidify the country's democratic institutions to weed out corruption, but even then we know from experience that institutions are tenuous. You need a few generations of people with non-corrupt principles to fill positions throughout the government.

coldseat said:

That's not surprising. Democrats are supporting their president, Independents are fickle and Republicans are obviously going to blame Biden for all of it and claim their man would have done it better.

Assuming that they get the Afgan nationals at the airport out without major loses of life, which it appears they'll be able to do now, I think in time this will fade. Thankfully it doesn't appear that the Taliban is going on a major revenge killing sprees right now. Hopefully they won't.

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It will fade. Number one is no Americans being killed in the end.. get out of there with that and no absolute disaster from here on out at the airport and it will definitely fade.

Lapaz said:

I think it would be worth keeping 3000 soldiers there for 100 years, since it provided a base of operations to deal with regional terrorists. Their purpose would be more immediately important than the purpose of the troops in Europe. I would've reduced that presence, before eliminating the presence in Afghanistan.

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This is one of the problems with our system. No one is going to win an election saying that we need to keep 3000 troops in Afghanistan for 50 more years. They would get ran off the stage.

Our leaders have to run for reelection constantly. No candidate is going to get elected with a 20 year plan that may not show results for 10 years. China has a huge advantage over us in the respect.

samiam5211 said:

yea, it's easy for people to be against a bad outcome, those people have no idea what they want though.

No one wants this, but no one has any suggestions as to what an alternative is. Most people would oppose anything we do with regard to Afganistan, because there isn't any option that results in a good outcome.

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Well, I think that's a bit defeatist. We can do better than that. Certainly could have planned an exit better than what is transpiring currently. We should have started evacuating people quietly months ago and not announced full withdrawal until most of the evacuations were complete. This was clearly a failure of intelligence and anticipation. We've all seen this movie before, and I don't really get how Biden wouldn't have known this might happen if he's getting sitreps we're not privy to.

I'm not content to just up and leave without trying to take care of those who helped us there. Now, thousands of people are trapped and can't get to the airport. So unless we go and rescue them, they're on their own.

DaveXA said:

Well, I think that's a bit defeatist. We can do better than that. Certainly could have planned an exit better than what is transpiring currently. We should have started evacuating people quietly months ago and not announced full withdrawal until most of the evacuations were complete. This was clearly a failure of intelligence and anticipation. We've all seen this movie before, and I don't really get how Biden wouldn't have known this might happen if he's getting sitreps we're not privy to.

I'm not content to just up and leave without trying to take care of those who helped us there. Now, thousands of people are trapped and can't get to the airport. So unless we go and rescue them, they're on their own.

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I'm not saying we couldn't do better, but I am saying that there was never a way out of this that would get positive results in a public opinion poll.

DaveXA said:

Well, I think that's a bit defeatist. We can do better than that. Certainly could have planned an exit better than what is transpiring currently. We should have started evacuating people quietly months ago and not announced full withdrawal until most of the evacuations were complete. This was clearly a failure of intelligence and anticipation. We've all seen this movie before, and I don't really get how Biden wouldn't have known this might happen if he's getting sitreps we're not privy to.

I'm not content to just up and leave without trying to take care of those who helped us there. Now, thousands of people are trapped and can't get to the airport. So unless we go and rescue them, they're on their own.

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Very much this for me too. I get that Monday morning quarterbacking is easy and hindsight is 50/50 (hat tip to Cam), but it seems like enough people were sounding enough sirens that it didn't have to go down like this.

samiam5211 said:

I'm not saying we couldn't do better, but I am saying that there was never a way out of this that would get positive results in a public opinion poll.

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I agree with that too. It was always going to be ugly and once it went down support could only drop.

Lapaz said:

I think it would be worth keeping 3000 soldiers there for 100 years, since it provided a base of operations to deal with regional terrorists. Their purpose would be more immediately important than the purpose of the troops in Europe. I would've reduced that presence, before eliminating the presence in Afghanistan.

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This was in 2017


This was on July 9t of this year:



Do you really want to keep claiming that the Afgans would have held their ground with the help of 3,000 American troops? It's just not a realistic expectations. If anything the last 48 hours and last 20 years have taught us is that we need to stop believing in these fairy tail scenarios. It was never going to happen.

DaveXA said:

Are you saying the Taliban aren't terrorists when they're terrorizing their own people and beheading people in the streets for providing support to the US?

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I don't know how you got that from what I posted. We can play semantics all day around what a "terrorist" is. but generally speaking, the Taliban are militant Muslims; public beheadings may sound like terrorist acts, but under the Muslim ideology, it is simply justice.

SystemShock said:

You and I have very different definitions of "working".

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I think it's the criteria.

It was working, in the sense that the government, etc., in place was relatively stable, like in the sense someone on life support is being kept alive.

It wasn't working, in the sense that putting them on life support is supposed to keep them alive and get them to the point where they can keep themselves alive without the support.

Personally, I do think there's an argument for continued international presence to ensure stability, preserve fundamental human rights, etc. But that's in principle. In practice, it doesn't work like that. And I think, in terms of US action, it's pretty clear that simply leaving 3,000 US soldiers there would not have cut it.

SaulGoodmanEsq said:

Absolutely. It's pretty clear the intelligence community/military either had horrible information or outright deceived everyone as to how fragile the Afghan military was. Maybe this lady and others like her were contemplating exit plans but not ones so immediate. All the U.S. accomplished was foster a generation of people in Afghanistan with a false sense of security. Imagine growing up in this fictional version of Afghanistan from ages five to twenty-five. They lived in an idealized Western democracy without understanding it was all an illusion propped up by American lives and dollars. That is ultimately why nation-building fails. True change comes when the majority of people want it to happen. [Insert joke about 'except in the United States thanks to Senators and the Electoral College' here.]

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U.S. civilian and military leaders have deceived the American public for at least 15 years about how fragile Afghan security forces were. They have constantly stated that Afghan military and police forces have "improved dramatically" and that has never been the case.

U.S. civilian and military officials rarely, if ever, reported on Afghan government corruption. However, they talked about it a lot in private, off the record. For example, Afghan military and police commanders for years would pocket the salaries of their subordinates and over-report how many troops they had serving under them, so that the U.S. would keep giving them more money for salaries. And U.S. officials never effectively addressed rampant corruption such as this. Meanwhile, Afghan military and police members were being paid a pittance of the salary that they had been promised. No wonder they didn't put up a fight.

The Washington Post's "Afghanistan Papers" stories has a lot of good reporting about this.

Withdrawl was always going to be ugly but I wish the planning was better to get people out

Poison said:

Respectfully, this is utterly incorrect.

@Lapaz misspoke when he referred to the location where the 9/11 hijackers were trained but the essence of his point, that Afghanistan under Taliban rule was a training ground for militant Islamists, is absolutely correct.

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Training militant Islamists and training terrorists are 2 different things. There is a huge difference between the dude carrying an AK-47/RPG running around caves in a desert of rock and sand (with the occasional poppy field) and the dude blowing himself up in a train station in London.

Poison said:

This was not about merely turning a blind eye to Bin Laden’s presence in the country. This was about the provision of active support to him and the Al Qaeda organization.

From pages 66-7 of the 9/11 Commission Report:

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I don't see how that counters what I said. Great place to hide and play boot camp, but nothing else.

Bolo said:

Withdrawl was always going to be ugly but I wish the planning was better to get people out

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This will be a black eye on the Biden Presidency forever, unless they stay in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future and evacuate as many people as possible. I say evacuate everybody who doesn't want to stay. If that is 40 million people, then so be it.

SystemShock said:

I don't know how you got that from what I posted. We can play semantics all day around what a "terrorist" is. but generally speaking, the Taliban are militant Muslims; public beheadings may sound like terrorist acts, but under the Muslim ideology, it is simply justice.

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It's much more than justice, it's basically threatening death to everyone who doesn't fall in line. I really don't care what Muslim ideology thinks about it.

bdb13 said:

I think it's some combination of the powerful images, unexpected swiftness of the Taliban takeover, and probably people wanting to disassociate themselves from the blame for something they just previously supported.

And partisanship ... Lest we forget the partisanship.

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You're forgetting the people that may have changed their mind because they believe it was wrong to leave, but didn't have all of the information when they initially voted. Of course there is huge partisanship among Republicans, and they will disagree with anything, but I'm a democrat, and I want Biden to succeed, but I disagreed with this decision.