US strikes deal w/ Taliban to remove troops from Afghanistan (3 Viewers)

[Heathen]

Surprised I didn't see it posted anywhere. And to preface -- I know there are too many contextual complexities to name regarding this.

Props to this administration for pushing to get this done. Endless war shouldn't be what American citizens view as 'normal'.

This would be a huge win for Americans and Afghanis if this works out as planned:

Afghan conflict: US and Taliban sign deal to end 18-year war

President Trump says it is "time after all these years to bring our people back home".

www.bbc.com

The US and Nato allies have agreed to withdraw all troops within 14 months if the militants uphold the deal.

President Trump said it had been a "long and hard journey" in Afghanistan. "It's time after all these years to bring our people back home," he said.

Talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban are due to follow.

Under the agreement, the militants also agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in the areas they control.

 

[coldseat]

Sounds terrible and more and more hopeless for these people

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/31/us-government-left-its-own-journalists-behind-afghanistan/

Why is that an opinion article? Is it the authors opinion that what he says, happened? Or did it actually happen the way he describes?

I guess I'm just confused why it's not just a regular news article.

 

[MT15]

It’s an opinion piece. We should take it as such, not as fact, unless it is backed up by regular reporting.

 

[bdb13]

Why is that an opinion article? Is it the authors opinion that what he says, happened? Or did it actually happen the way he describes?

I guess I'm just confused why it's not just a regular news article.

Per his bio on the site he's a foreign policy and foreign affairs columnist for the Global Opinions section of the Washington Post, which launched in 2016:

new Global Opinions section which greatly expands The Post’s mix of viewpoints by adding contributing columnists and fresh voices from major regions across the world. The initiative first launches in Europe, where it will be anchored by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Anne Applebaum, intensifying The Post’s coverage of Europe and U.S.-European relations through expert commentary, editorials and op-eds from writers in the region as well as interviews with world leaders and first-person accounts from news-makers. Additional regions will roll out in the coming months. As The Post broadens its opinion content internationally, it also bolsters coverage of U.S. foreign policy in Washington, D.C. with the addition of columnist Josh Rogin who will anchor a heavily-reported opinion blog focusing on diplomacy and foreign affairs.
...
Rogin brings a deep understanding of U.S. international relations. Since 2014, he worked as a columnist for Bloomberg View covering foreign policy and national security. Prior to that, he covered foreign policy for The Daily Beast, Newsweek, Foreign Policy magazine, Congressional Quarterly, and the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
...
The Global Opinions initiative will complement the work of The Post’s existing roster of global affairs writers, including Jackson Diehl, Dan Drezner, Jim Hoagland, David Ignatius, Robert Kagan, Lally Weymouth, and Fareed Zakaria

https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/wp/2016/05/24/the-washington-post-begins-global-expansion-of-opinions/

 

[bdb13]

It’s an opinion piece. We should take it as such, not as fact, unless it is backed up by regular reporting.

I'm not trying to go down a rabbit hole on opinion pieces because I think there's generally a more distinct difference, but here I think what he says/reports pretty much IS backed up by the 'regular' reporting of others other than the direct quotes he had from his interview with Fly and his anonymous sourcing for the quotes from the senior State department official and spokesperson for the USAGM (I don't see any major reason to disbelieve Rogin to a greater extent than anyone else citing anonymous sources).

I don't really ever take any reporting as fact anyway unless it's verifiable, and a lot of times it's because of all of the anonymous sourcing and such that goes on in regular reporting today, but I don't actually see much of anything in this piece or in Rogin's background that, to me, warrants viewing this with a greater skepticism than you would a regularly reported piece as it's not really distinguishable from that anyway.

 

[MT15]

I think newspapers like WaPo would have regular reporting on it, and not label it as opinion if they could verify it. They have to be able to verify news pieces independently, not so with opinion pieces. That’s a salacious enough story, that if they could verify it, it would have been news, not opinion. There‘s a big difference in the way news stories are vetted, and not the same vetting would have taken place in an opinion piece.

obviously you can believe what you want, but I’m less inclined to believe these pieces. I’ve been burnt over the past few years enough that I don’t believe these pieces that tend to elicit strong emotions.

 

[GrandAdmiral]

What the hell?

As of late Tuesday, US officials told the Post that they were unsure of Mullin's whereabouts.

Mullin "has been and is currently completely safe," his spokeswoman, Meredith Blanford, said in a statement sent out Tuesday night, without elaborating on his current location.
Mullin posted on his Instagram early Wednesday morning that he was not missing, but did "go dark for a little, yes because it wasn't safe to be communicating."

"Have we been helping get Americans out of Afghanistan, yes. Is the mission continuing, yes," he wrote.

Washington Post: GOP congressman threatened US embassy staff in trying to enter Afghanistan | CNN Politics

Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin threatened US embassy staff in Tajikistan, outraged that they would not assist him in carrying a huge amount of money through the country as he attempted to travel to Afghanistan for an unauthorized evacuation effort, The Washington Post reported.

www.cnn.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

From the post
============
Republicans finally have an issue on which they can legitimately criticize President Biden. In a new Pew Research Center poll, only 27 percent of Americans say that Biden’s handling of Afghanistan has been good or excellent.

Even some Democrats are quite critical of the president. This is a golden opportunity for the GOP to try to reclaim its credibility as a serious party on national security.


And yet it is blowing this chance by falling prey to the same compulsions — carelessness with the truth, cynical opportunism, mindless posturing, excessive outrage, rank prejudice, blatant hypocrisy — that have been its hallmarks in the Trump years.


The fundamental problem for the GOP is that it knows what it’s against — whatever Biden has done — but it has no idea what it’s for.

Appearing on Fox Business on Tuesday, former president Donald Trump fulminated about “the level of incompetence on this withdrawal.” But when pressed on how he would have handled Afghanistan, the best he could come up with was: “We should have hit that country years ago, hit it really hard, and then let it rot.” Huh? Trump went on to say “We should have withdrawn in a totally different way” without specifying what that way was.


The problem for Trump and the Trumpkins is that the Biden pullout from Afghanistan is merely a continuation of the Trump pullout. It wasn’t Biden, after all, who set a deadline for withdrawal, had his secretary of state meet with the Taliban or forced the release of 5,000 terrorists. That was Trump……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/01/hawley-cruz-attacks-biden-afghanistan-exit/

 

[bdb13]

I think newspapers like WaPo would have regular reporting on it, and not label it as opinion if they could verify it. They have to be able to verify news pieces independently, not so with opinion pieces. That’s a salacious enough story, that if they could verify it, it would have been news, not opinion. There‘s a big difference in the way news stories are vetted, and not the same vetting would have taken place in an opinion piece.

obviously you can believe what you want, but I’m less inclined to believe these pieces. I’ve been burnt over the past few years enough that I don’t believe these pieces that tend to elicit strong emotions.

Which part(s) of it are you especially skeptical of? That USAGM journalists have been left behind or that whole background story or that names were provided to the Taliban?

I think the latter was reported by regular reporters and here's an article from the Washington monthly from a few days ago talking about the USAGM personnel with some of the same background story info. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/...u-s-media-getting-left-behind-in-afghanistan/ (sorry do not have time to copy and paste from the article right now)

 

[DaveXA]

From the post
============
Republicans finally have an issue on which they can legitimately criticize President Biden. In a new Pew Research Center poll, only 27 percent of Americans say that Biden’s handling of Afghanistan has been good or excellent.

Even some Democrats are quite critical of the president. This is a golden opportunity for the GOP to try to reclaim its credibility as a serious party on national security.


And yet it is blowing this chance by falling prey to the same compulsions — carelessness with the truth, cynical opportunism, mindless posturing, excessive outrage, rank prejudice, blatant hypocrisy — that have been its hallmarks in the Trump years.


The fundamental problem for the GOP is that it knows what it’s against — whatever Biden has done — but it has no idea what it’s for.

Appearing on Fox Business on Tuesday, former president Donald Trump fulminated about “the level of incompetence on this withdrawal.” But when pressed on how he would have handled Afghanistan, the best he could come up with was: “We should have hit that country years ago, hit it really hard, and then let it rot.” Huh? Trump went on to say “We should have withdrawn in a totally different way” without specifying what that way was.


The problem for Trump and the Trumpkins is that the Biden pullout from Afghanistan is merely a continuation of the Trump pullout. It wasn’t Biden, after all, who set a deadline for withdrawal, had his secretary of state meet with the Taliban or forced the release of 5,000 terrorists. That was Trump……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/01/hawley-cruz-attacks-biden-afghanistan-exit/

Trump is funny, "we should have hit that country years ago, hit it hard"...so...you had 4 years to do it, yet, here we are.

 

[MT15]

Which part(s) of it are you especially skeptical of? That USAGM journalists have been left behind or that whole background story or that names were provided to the Taliban?

I think the latter was reported by regular reporters and here's an article from the Washington monthly from a few days ago talking about the USAGM personnel with some of the same background story info. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/...u-s-media-getting-left-behind-in-afghanistan/ (sorry do not have time to copy and paste from the article right now)

The Washington Monthly article is confusing. She says that staffers directly hired by VOA and another agency were eligible to leave (i think she mentioned that they were being allowed through one airport gate) then she goes on to say in the next sentence that VOA staffers are being “forgotten”. She also interspersed talk of journalists who worked for Afghan media and lumps them in. These are all Afghan citizens, I think from reading the article, and some of them haven’t worked with the Americans. One of her main criticisms was that nobody in the military or State Department would tell her specifics. I can see why they wouldn’t at this point, though, especially since that was written before the final exit of our troops.

Look, I’m certainly not saying things went perfectly, at all. But I am a bit frustrated by the fact that people don’t seem to acknowledge how many people were successfully removed in such a short window of time. And we are being told that the US will still work with the Taliban to continue to get people out for as long as they can. I think we won’t know the whole story for a while, and I guess I’m willing to see how things go before saying that everything is awful. It was never going to be perfect.

 

[bdb13]

The Washington Monthly article is confusing. She says that staffers directly hired by VOA and another agency were eligible to leave (i think she mentioned that they were being allowed through one airport gate) then she goes on to say in the next sentence that VOA staffers are being “forgotten”. She also interspersed talk of journalists who worked for Afghan media and lumps them in. These are all Afghan citizens, I think from reading the article, and some of them haven’t worked with the Americans. One of her main criticisms was that nobody in the military or State Department would tell her specifics. I can see why they wouldn’t at this point, though, especially since that was written before the final exit of our troops.

Look, I’m certainly not saying things went perfectly, at all. But I am a bit frustrated by the fact that people don’t seem to acknowledge how many people were successfully removed in such a short window of time. And we are being told that the US will still work with the Taliban to continue to get people out for as long as they can. I think we won’t know the whole story for a while, and I guess I’m willing to see how things go before saying that everything is awful. It was never going to be perfect.

Upon some more searching I found the state department pretty much acknowledged the situation today:

QUESTION: I hope you can hear me. Two things, real brief. One, in terms of the airport and the negotiations with the Taliban between the Qataris and the Turks, are you guys – do you guys play any role on that? And do you have any indication of how close they actually are?

And then secondly, I wanted to drill down into the USAGM, the VOA, RFA employees and their families who didn’t get out. Do you have any update on getting them out? Thank you.

MR PRICE: Thanks, Matt. So first on the airport. As you know, this is something we have been focused on for some time, knowing that a functioning civilian airport is important for not only the provision of humanitarian aid, but importantly for the ability of people to secure transit out of the country, should they choose to do so.

We have been working for quite some time with regional partners, and that does include our Turkish and Qatari partners on this. We have been working with private sector assessors as well. We noted earlier – excuse me, late last week – that an assessment of the airport had been conducted, and that information has been passed on to those involved in these discussions.

So we are not going to get ahead of our partners on this. We’ll leave it to them to speak to any progress or developments when it comes to the future disposition of the airport and its operations, but we have been very clear that we will continue to do all we can to support the reopening of Kabul’s civilian airport just as soon as that can happen.

When it comes to USAGM, the department is committed to the safety of those who have done service on behalf of the American people, and that certainly includes those who have worked for USAGM, the commitment, the dedication they have shown to the United States. The State Department and the Department of Defense worked around the clock to facilitate and to evacuate as many individuals as we could over this two-week period. As we’ve said, there were more than 123,000 people safely evacuated, and the vast majority of that 123,000 will have been Afghans at risk. We worked literally around the clock when it came to this USAGM and RFE/RL group and worked to facilitate their departure both via military – a military option, and later with a charter aircraft.

As the situation outside of the airport grew increasingly dangerous, we advised individuals to shelter in place, as we continued to develop departure options. We did not forget about USAGM employees and their families, nor will we. These individuals have served the United States. They have not only worked for us, they have worked with us, and we remain keenly focused on getting them out safely just as soon as we can. We will remain focused on that.

Department Press Briefing - August 31, 2021 - United States Department of State

4:32 p.m. EDT MR PRICE: Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks very much for joining us today. Just a couple things at the top. First, as you heard from the President and the Secretary, more than 123,000 people – including about 6,000 American citizens – have been safely flown out of Afghanistan. This...

www.state.gov

I guess the angle that I'm coming from with this is that, while acknowledging the Herculean efforts of our military and others to extract and save all of those people, and also acknowledging the reality of this being such a clustered situation... It's just difficult for me not to set my focus here on the ones here who were wrongly left behind due to the way some of the stuff was obviously bungled.

In turn, I guess I'm kind of bothered that other people seem to me to be downplaying or dismissing the terrible predicament that these people are in. The fact that we got 123,000 people out of there does not, in my view, at all mitigate the fact that we left behind these people that we should have never, ever left behind.

I know it wasn't ever going to be perfect, but there's another reality out there somewhere existing between perfection and what actually occurred where we didn't leave some of our own behind.

 

[MT15]

We were never going to get every single Afghan who wanted to leave out. I do trust that they are still working on getting more people out.

 

[bdb13]

We were never going to get every single Afghan who wanted to leave out. I do trust that they are still working on getting more people out.

I agree, and I agree that they're probably trying right now to get those very people out and others.
..
There was an, in my view, lack of preparedness on the part of the Biden administration for how fast it went to complete shirt and I think there was a level of arrogance or dismissiveness or something akin to that that's most attributable for that as I'm pretty confident that the intelligence community provided information that a quick, cascading takeover by the Taliban was a possibility.

And I don't think it's unfair at this point to see a line between that lack of preparedness and the predicament of individuals like the ones at the USAMG who are in obvious danger over there because of their work with us.

It's not personal against Biden, it's the same way I would view if it was Trump or Bush or Matthew McConaughey in the role. I'm pretty confident in that.

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

McConaughey 2024!

 

[coldseat]

I agree, and I agree that they're probably trying right now to get those very people out and others.
..
There was an, in my view, lack of preparedness on the part of the Biden administration for how fast it went to complete shirt and I think there was a level of arrogance or dismissiveness or something akin to that that's most attributable for that as I'm pretty confident that the intelligence community provided information that a quick, cascading takeover by the Taliban was a possibility.

And I don't think it's unfair at this point to see a line between that lack of preparedness and the predicament of individuals like the ones at the USAMG who are in obvious danger over there because of their work with us.

It's not personal against Biden, it's the same way I would view if it was Trump or Bush or Matthew McConaughey in the role. I'm pretty confident in that.

I really have to disagree with this, but I know I'm in the minority here. I think Biden and the administration may have been too singularly focused on getting out of Afghanistan that they had some tunnel vision and may not have truly had a grasped the state of the Afghan government and military. But more than anything, I just think it was an incredibly complex situation that changed so dramatically and swiftly that it was really impossible for anybody to predict how it would go down. So we were mostly left reacting to a developing situation.

I'm not saying mistakes weren't made, but I think we end up exactly where we where at regardless of who is president given where we were when Biden took over, only with a much worse outcome. But like I said, I know I'm in the minority in that view. As recent polls would indicate, most people believe, as you do, that there was an ideal way to pull out that some other theoretical president would have figured out or that Biden could have prevented the suicide bomber or that we could have secured all of Kabal or something else that to me is just unrealistic. To me, that is folly and exactly the type of thinking and overestimating of America's power/military might that led us to such and intractable situation. If anything, the people to blame for all of this are America's voters. Especially people in the middle (Independents) who are constantly switching sides which allows for such a muddled and disastrous foreign policy. And they're about to do it again next year when they give control back to Republicans and Kevin McCarthy in the House. Just in time for Republicans to ramp up their attacks on women, minorities and LGBTQ and find another foreign war to get us into (we coming Iran). Yay, America!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/post-abc-poll-biden-afghanistan/2021/09/02/5520cd3e-0c16-11ec-9781-07796ffb56fe_story.htm

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

If anything, the people to blame for all of this are America's voters. Especially people in the middle (Independents) who are constantly switching sides which allows for such a muddled and disastrous foreign policy. And they're about to do it again next year when they give control back to Republicans and Kevin McCarthy in the House. Just in time for Republicans to ramp up their attacks on women, minorities and LGBTQ and find another foreign war to get us into (we coming Iran). Yay, America!

Spot on. Was watching the new Netflix documentary on 911 and the War and they interviewed the only member of Congress, Barbara Lee, to vote against the sweeping resolution giving President Bush (and his predecessors) near unlimited powers to wage an endless war. She talked about how she received hundreds of death threats on a weekly basis. Dollars to donuts some of those people who threatened her later voted for Trump and were vehement about ending the endless wars!

 

[bdb13]

I really have to disagree with this, but I know I'm in the minority here. I think Biden and the administration may have been too singularly focused on getting out of Afghanistan that they had some tunnel vision and may not have truly had a grasped the state of the Afghan government and military. But more than anything, I just think it was an incredibly complex situation that changed so dramatically and swiftly that it was really impossible for anybody to predict how it would go down. So we were mostly left reacting to a developing situation.

I'm not saying mistakes weren't made, but I think we end up exactly where we where at regardless of who is president given where we were when Biden took over, only with a much worse outcome. But like I said, I know I'm in the minority in that view. As recent polls would indicate, most people believe, as you do, that there was an ideal way to pull out that some other theoretical president would have figured out or that Biden could have prevented the suicide bomber or that we could have secured all of Kabal or something else that to me is just unrealistic. To me, that is folly and exactly the type of thinking and overestimating of America's power/military might that led us to such and intractable situation. If anything, the people to blame for all of this are America's voters. Especially people in the middle (Independents) who are constantly switching sides which allows for such a muddled and disastrous foreign policy. And they're about to do it again next year when they give control back to Republicans and Kevin McCarthy in the House. Just in time for Republicans to ramp up their attacks on women, minorities and LGBTQ and find another foreign war to get us into (we coming Iran). Yay, America!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/post-abc-poll-biden-afghanistan/2021/09/02/5520cd3e-0c16-11ec-9781-07796ffb56fe_story.htm

I realize there wasn't an ideal way to pull this off.. but yeah without expounding further on it because it's probably pointless as it's all basically hypothetical anyway, I just don't believe that this was the most optimal result that could possibly be achieved or that another President/administration couldn't have performed better.

I concede that I could be wrong, but it's how I see it.

 

[coldseat]

I realize there wasn't an ideal way to pull this off.. but yeah without expounding further on it because it's probably pointless as it's all basically hypothetical anyway, I just don't believe that this was the most optimal result that could possibly be achieved or that another President/administration couldn't have performed better.

I concede that I could be wrong, but it's how I see it.

Just for shirts and giggles, which presidential administration (out of the last 4 or 5 that we've had) would have done it better?