2021/09/14/11:21
originally posted in ND "Politics" on 2021-09-14
Post
Dennis wrote*:
1. POTUS pulled out his fire power before his evacuees. He made the mess. (and you know it.
2. Trump said his plan could change according to the situation on the ground. He told the Taliban that they would pay a heavy price, if they interfered with the withdrawal.
Biden said they had to negotiate with the Taliban. (beg)
Putting the blame on Biden is not ludicrous, but your statement is.
Afghanistan was hosting the elements that attacked us, but there was no reason to stay there as long as we did. Traditionally, their only major resource was the opium poppy. In these modern times they have many more natural resources, but lack the educational infrastructure to exploit them. Now a major resource is the military equipment that we left behind. They can't employ the high tech stuff, but they can sure sell it to others that want to attack us. The Biden exit used a commercial airport that was not defensible. They should have kept the Bagram AFB, that was defensible. There was nothing carved in stone, about the the Trump withdrawal. No agreement was signed, it was simply a proposal, changeable according to the situation on the ground. Your calling it an agreement is silly.
I disagree. From what I've heard, Biden did about as good a job as it was possible to do under the circumstances.
"POTUS pulled out his fire power before his evacuees" -- sources, please. We were never holding the airport; the opposition let us use it because they were perfectly happy to get Americans and dissidents out of there, minimizing potential sources of disruption.
"Trump said..." -- Trump said lots of things, but we could never depend on any of them. The guy had no leadership ability; he shed competent people faster than he could acquire them, retaining only the coattail-riders and sycophants.
"Biden said they had to negotiate with the Taliban." -- sources explaining why this was bad, please? The way Beau explains it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-ZmHozdDTU) what we've been calling "the opposition" is now the de-facto government, negotiating with foreign powers (including US) as a state. One of those negotiations involved safe passage beyond the deadline, which we needed.
The reality is that Afghanistan is now their territory, and if we have things we need regarding that territory, they're the people we need to negotiate with. This is how it always works.
"Putting the blame on Biden is not ludicrous, but your statement is." -- I didn't say he was free of blame, just that he shouldn't bear the brunt of it. American foreign policy is ultimately to blame, because it insists that the "nations" we build must remain dependent on us; the mass media (both sides) also bear a great deal of blame for not talking about policy, for not properly informing the public.
Beau on who's to blame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVotMlYOGHA
I agree with what you said up until this point:
"They should have kept the Bagram AFB, that was defensible." -- it was an hour and a half a way, down a dangerous and vulnerable road. Beau talks about this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXqhfSn8aTE
"No agreement was signed, it was simply a proposal, changeable according to the situation on the ground. Your calling it an agreement is silly."
If you break an agreement, you lose whatever concessions the other side might have made -- in this case, putting more lives at risk. If you think Biden could have made a better agreement and failed to do so, then you're agreeing that Trump's deal was not the greatest -- and was in fact so bad that it would be worth the credibility we'd lose by trying to renegotiate it after agreeing to it.
I don't know enough about the situation on the ground to say whether that would be correct or not. Do you?