Do you think Biden made the right call in Afghanistan? And if not, what should he have done?
- Thread starter acri1
- Start date
Json
Superstar
It’s a catch-22. You start backing out like things are going to collapse it causes a panic.
The hope was that the government would stand so they had to work like that. The reason you never hear the term peaceful government collapse is those things don’t happen at the same time, it’s like a guy walking out of a building on fire slowly whistling. It doesn’t happen.
When a store closes, the last day of workers and the last day of the storefront and supplies being boxed up and moved aren’t the same thing.
It was the right decision because the US can't afford to be there
the Empire is crumbling, and America accepted defeat and made a tactical retreat
All that money and resources burned for nothing, the mismanagement of this country's military will be told in history of this country's downfall which is upon us, society is crumbling, the citizens do not trust government, corruption thrives in every sector of the nation, and has gone unchecked to the point the crooks are too big fail which is the exact term they used back when they used Obama to bail out all these crooks when they should've been thrown in prison.
The exit was not fukked up
The last 2 decades were fukk ups
You can't just make a slow exit and try to fix 2 decades worth of destabalization
Plus the people the U.S. trained were hand picked illiterate drug addicts
This fukk up HAD to be by design
Althalucian
All Star
I don't know...maybe a pandemic and a immigration/refugee process that disintegrated during Trump?
Telling everyone there was no chance the country would collapse immediately right before it collapsed immediately was a fukk-up.
Failure to ensure Afghan visas had been dealt with before de-securing the country was a fukk-up.
Failure to secure the airport and basic paths of exit was a fukk-up.
Having planes take off with people on them was a fukk-up.
You can believe that a quick exit was necessary, you can believe that the last 20 years were useless, you can believe that Trump dealt the administration a bad hand, and still recognize that Biden clearly fukked it up and is playing the damage control game right now.
Althalucian
All Star
The buck stops with him and the military, as well as any other previous military members who were in charge, but I still find it hard to believe we have all the information about the decision. Or that it was all just Biden making decisions.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Bit of devil's advocate but:
Were we supposed to resettle most of Afghanistan?
If we started a major resettlement process early the message that would send would be disastrous right?
Pretty sure they would've had to get those Visa's going out years ago to actually accomplish what was desired.
idk if that's realistic re airport
the alternative for the planes was what?
I think we can all imagine the most ideal exit plans but I don't think life works that way in practice
Where do you get "most of Afghanistan" from? I'm talking about people they already had on their list, many of whom had already filed to leave the country. My own personal feelings aside, from a US strategic point they had a clear list of people who had helped them out. It's not a big number. A few months could have accomplished it easily if it was organized. Now we're trying to evacuate the exact same # of people except doing it under extreme duress and a lot of them gonna die.
Now that the Taliban taken over, there are MORE vulnerable people trying to get out who weren't originally on the list. It would have been nice if this period could have just focused on some of them instead of having to play catch-up with all the ones who already should have been out.
Drops in the ocean bro, drops in the ocean
And whoever said Trump dealt him a bad hand is stupid.
Bush, Obama, Trump all gave him a bad hand and an immoral and illegal/unconstitutional war
War is one of the things that gains the most bipartisanship
And as far as playing damage control, you know very well no matter what he would be playing damage control.
No matter what mainstream media would say we should have stayed, no matter what.
Now most maintream medias are in cahoots trying to dictate the narrative by keep comparing to the fall of Saigon.
No matter what bro, no matter what he would be playing damage control, YOU KNOW THIS!!!!
And mainstream media is 100% complicit in the fall of Afghanistan.
Json
Superstar
You’re advocating for yelling fire in a theater.
Best case scenario the Kabul government just limped along for a year as the Taliban over took the country and America had a year to remove interpreters and such leaving a small embassy staff. That would be easier to remove.
You can’t have a government collapse and orderly governmental process of visa and logistics.
I'm gonna repeat it again - there was a giant list of people in the pipeline already trying to get out before any of this started.
Choosing to get your house in order and get them out first before going into emergency mode isn't "yelling fire in a theater". It's just effective bureaucracy. There were plenty applications that had been backlogged 5 years or more. They should have cleaned their slate before they even started, and then they would have had that much fewer to deal with when shyt went down.
This bill was introduced in Congress back in June. So if you're worrying about "yelling fire", well, it was already yelled. Why not just let this play out and get all the guys out who were approved via this bill before making the next step?
These 16 Republicans voted against speeding up visas for Afghans fleeing the Taliban
The House overwhelmingly passed a bill to make it easier for Afghans who assisted the American military to relocate to the U.S. The Averting Loss of Life and Injury by Expediting SIVs Act (ALLIES) Act was approved by a 407-16 vote on July 22. The 16 "no" votes were all from Republicans.
The ALLIES Act removes some application requirements for Afghan special immigrant visas that led to long backlogs and wait times. It also boosts the number of visas for Afghans by an additional 8,000 to 19,000. Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., introduced the bill in June, with 24 bipartisan cosponsors.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
You're trying to frame this very particularly.
You're saying the "list" I assume you mean US interpreters? Most of Afghanistan ie where do you draw the line? Look at how many people are in Kabul at the airport. How many other former Afghan employees and their families were at risk before the collapse of Kabul? What about the local NGO employees? I don't think it's a small amount of people interpreters or otherwise when you consider dependents and the entire country not just Kabul but who knows. Seems like the State Department took care of their embassy staff from what I read but again who knows.
Understandably it seems like a lot of these people were committed and willing to stay as long as possible to make things work but were sold out by their military and government.
Also should we have taken their special forces and pilots too before things went to shyt? That's what politicians and the public are asking for now of course. Regarding the airpot and again why I say "most" it looked like there were more than 10k people there from the videos and images.
For one I think we would've had to begun getting everyone out when Trump was still office and the Afghan public would certainly notice. It could be a whole other conversation but lettuce not forget Covid and that Trump royally fukked up the State Department and DHS. This isn't just me shytting on Trump or trying to give Biden a pass either but it's reality and the rot and brain drain can't be waved away.
I certainly agree the now time would've been best spent thinking about other groups to get out and this would've always probably been an eventuality but then again you have to think about the time constraints of what was agreed to. Maybe right now this is only the opportunity the US would've had for an airlift. I don't see how it would've been facilitated after September.
I'm not drawing the line myself. Obviously I would draw a different line than the US government draws. But I'm just referring to the standards the US government had already set, applications they were already dealing with, bills for accelerated visas that had already passed. I'm talking about THEIR list of visas to fulfill which was still mired in backlogs at the very moment they chose to flee.
Like I said, those are all difficult questions but it would have been nice if they already had all the other shyt out of the way. Then they could have at least focused on the difficult questions. It's a lot easier to handle an emergency evacuation if you've already cleared all the non-emergency list first.
A lot of these applications were already in process when Trump was still in office. It's just shytty bureaucracy and lack of priorities that caused them to get delayed so long.
Json
Superstar
A. We’re in a pandemic now. It’s just different now.
B.I’m friends with a bunch of Afghans interpreters who have already been relocated over the past few years. That’s not the problem. We’ve already been moving them out.
These argument here destroys the rest of your whole scenario.
You’re advocating for some orderly movement but also the one scenario we’ve seen time and time again will destabilize an entire situation.
This is what happens when a run on a bank happens.
Is the bank in trouble..maybe
is it going to fail…maybe
Fail in two weeks, a year, a day…who knows
But the sheer fact the panic sets in creates the unstable situation of people trampling each other like what happened in Kabul.
