Biden stands by his decision to abandon Afghanistan - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15186204
I think it was a good idea to withdraw, just the execution was botched. Biden, in my view, made a persuasive argument for not pursuing a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan at the time Obama ordered a troop surge to Afghanistan. Here is an article that discusses some of the deliberations that were made during the Obama Presidency where Biden offered his views.

David Axelrod of CNN wrote:"Our objective in going there was to destroy al Qaeda so why the hell are we plunging into COIN here?" the vice president asked, using the acronym for the type of elaborate counter insurgency program the military was proposing. "The president asked me to play the bad cop here and that's what I'm going to do."

In sometimes heated exchanges over the coming weeks, Biden sharply questioned Gates and the military architects of the plan. Capturing Osama bin Laden and destroying al Qaeda should remain the focus, he argued, and could be accomplished with a much smaller counter-terrorism force in the region. To commit to a larger counter insurgency would bog us down in a costly, open-ended war.

Biden's passion sprung from hard experience. He entered the Senate during the final years of Vietnam, when that long and painful war was effectively lost but not over. He had cast a vote in 2002 authorizing the war in Iraq that he quickly came to regret.

In the end, Obama agreed to send 30,000 additional troops but with benchmarks, including for the training of Afghan military and police, and a timetable for winding down the surge and handing responsibility for defending Afghanistan to the Afghans.

It wasn't the outcome Biden had hoped for, and he bore some scars from the fight. The Allied Commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was fired after a reporter overheard the general's aides crudely ridiculing Biden in McChrystal's presence. Gates would write in his 2014 memoir that while Biden was "a man of integrity," who was "impossible not to like...he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."

I've thought a lot this week about the deliberations I witnessed.

The concerns Biden expressed then have been more than vindicated today. We did get bogged down in Afghanistan. Yes, there has been enormous progress there on some fronts — most notably for women and girls, who suffered under the Taliban's repressive rule. Yes, our own military served with extraordinary courage and sacrificed greatly to give Afghans the chance for freedom denied by a brutal and repressive theocracy.

Yet this wasn't the mission that drew us to Afghanistan. Bin Laden was captured and killed a decade ago. Al Qaeda has been degraded. And, after 20 years in which so much American blood has been spilled and treasure lost, it was time to pass the task of securing those gains on to the Afghans themselves.


https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/18/opinions ... index.html

I think Biden's views were correct during that time when the Obama Administration was making it's deliberations on whether to order a troop surge or not.
#15186206
Politics_Observer wrote:I think it was a good idea to withdraw, just the execution was botched. Biden, in my view, made a persuasive argument for not pursuing a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan at the time Obama ordered a troop surge to Afghanistan. Here is an article that discusses some of the deliberations that were made during the Obama Presidency where Biden offered his views.



https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/18/opinions ... index.html

I think Biden's views were correct during that time when the Obama Administration was making it's deliberations on whether to order a troop surge or not.


@Politics_Observer ;

Biden is a wily old fox that operates under a certain exterior demeanor. Does he have some impairment as he gets older? Yes, absolutely. Is he the doddering figurehead that his opponents think he is? I am thinking not.
#15186256
colliric wrote:Is that a sarcastic joke???

He's got advancing dementia. I don't need to provide you with examples, you've already seen them.


If that means competent and righteous people can deliver the work in his stead then I have no problem with this.

I guess you are implying this is not the case though.
#15186259
Patrickov wrote:If that means competent and righteous people can deliver the work in his stead then I have no problem with this.

I guess you are implying this is not the case though.


I sincerely believe he has indeed put the people of Taiwan at risk of Communist Party take over, or at the very least made it extremely unlikely Taiwanese will ever get to live without the threat of communist invasion because the CCP response to the Taliban Victory has been swift. They see it as an opportunity to increase the pressure on Taiwan. He has set one of the worst ever examples of how to treat allies that I have ever seen in my lifetime, and it's all on video.

I highly suspect Trump will run again in 2024 now. I think it's guaranteed he will.
#15186262
colliric wrote:I sincerely believe he has indeed put the people of Taiwan at risk of Communist Party take over, or at the very least made it extremely unlikely Taiwanese will ever get to live without the threat of communist invasion because the CCP response to the Taliban Victory has been swift. They see it as an opportunity to increase the pressure on Taiwan. He has set one of the worst ever examples of how to treat allies that I have ever seen in my lifetime, and it's all on video.

I highly suspect Trump will run again in 2024 now. I think it's guaranteed he will.


I personally don't see Taiwan as a viable place to emigrate to exactly because it is most prone to such a fall, but I do not see the West's failure in Afghanistan directly results in a threat to them.

It should be noted that Taiwan is on the other side of China compared with Afghanistan, and Taiwan has a Strait.
#15186264
Biden's only mistake was not rounding up the American civilian contractors and NGOs and flying them out before the shit hit the fan.

That could come back to haunt him in much the same way the Iran hostage debacle fucked Carter.

Nobody that matters gives a shit about the Afghans.
#15186270
ingliz wrote:Nobody that matters gives a shit about the Afghans.


In some sense they have made their choice by letting Taliban overrun them so quickly. Even South Vietnam held out for a few months.
#15186271
colliric wrote:I sincerely believe he has indeed put the people of Taiwan at risk of Communist Party take over, or at the very least made it extremely unlikely Taiwanese will ever get to live without the threat of communist invasion because the CCP response to the Taliban Victory has been swift. They see it as an opportunity to increase the pressure on Taiwan. He has set one of the worst ever examples of how to treat allies that I have ever seen in my lifetime, and it's all on video.


:knife:

What utter nonsense. Taiwan and Afghanistan have literally nothing in common. It's a completely different conflict scenario. No doubt one of the reasons that motivated the retreat.
#15186273
Patrickov wrote:In some sense they have made their choice by letting Taliban overrun them so quickly. Even South Vietnam held out for a few months.


Who the heck wants to shoot people from their own ethnic background when you know they're probably going to win anyway? The Taliban went into blitzkrieg mode, that's the main difference.

I suspect the Taliban promising(and keeping to the promise at least for now) not to kill people actually speed up the process, because the Afghan forces do not have to fight for survival. They do not need to fight to stay alive.

Rugoz wrote::knife:

What utter nonsense. Taiwan and Afghanistan have literally nothing in common. It's a completely different conflict scenario. No doubt one of the reasons that motivated the retreat.


https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-18/ ... /100383386
#15186303
Politics_Observer wrote:@annatar1914

I think for the most part Biden knows what he is doing.





That's wishful thinking. On certain days Senile Joe doesn't know where Afghanistan is. Rumours are thick that Senile Joe woke up one morning and almost declared war on Delaware. All efforts to bring him back to sanity failed. He kept repeating like a Cato cartoon, "Delaware must be destroyed, Delaware must be destroyed..."
#15186304
Yes, yes, @Juin. You're a Trump cultist. Enough already.

Biden has a speech impediment. Why aren't you making fun of that? Trump and his ilk love to mock handicaps, don't they?
#15186306
Godstud wrote:Yes, yes, @Juin. You're a Trump cultist. Enough already.

Biden has a speech impediment. Why aren't you making fun of that? Trump and his ilk love to mock handicaps, don't they?




Since November Trump has been scoring tooooooo many own goals. You said speech impediment? I believe Joe's situation is worse than that. You recall that incident over plagiarism? Everyone quickly spotted the speech as borrowed from one of Her Britannic Majesty's idiots, Neil Kinnock of Labour, and accused Joe of plagiarism. It may have been unfair, as Joe may have been truly been unaware it was not his.
#15186335
How many stories do we read or hear or see about American soldiers at war compared to stories of refugees created by wars led by the United States? Civilian war stories disturb our mind-set of conducting perpetual warfare as an unquestioned American privilege. For Afghans, the war hasn’t ended simply because we, the United States, declared it to be over.

The only beneficiaries of the wars the U.S. has fought in my long lifetime are the generals and the war industry, and the generals have not suffered the consequences of their terrible advice to our presidents and the American people, not even to the point of creating adequate skepticism.
#15186347
@jimjam

From what I have gathered, it's the civilian political leaders who are elected by the people who many occasions seemed to have disregarded the advice of their generals and the advice experts which get them into these sorts of predicaments. So, I think you actually have it backwards in many instances. At least here recently with these recent wars after the Vietnam War. The generals simply advise and then do what they are told. But that doesn't mean the political leaders always listen to the advice that is given to them. and they sometimes go against the advice of the generals which in turn gets us into these kinds of messes.

That's not to say the generals have always been right, but they haven't always been wrong either. I wouldn't be pinning this all on the generals. At the end of the day, the political leaders call the shots and the buck stops with them and on many occasions, the political leaders got good advice from the generals and they went against that advice or simply ignored it to the country's own detriment. The generals are not politicians seeking to get re-elected and score political points with their base.

The generals and other experts are professionals who are well schooled in their craft. Their smart people whose advice has been ignored or went against by politicians on many occasions. But they still do what they are told despite knowing that their advice was ignored or decided against because that's their job. But don't try to blame to blame it all on the generals when it is the political leaders with the decision making power and not the generals.
#15186356
Politics_Observer wrote:@jimjam

But don't try to blame to blame it all on the generals when it is the political leaders with the decision making power and not the generals.


I agree but to think that there are not some generals who are not, essentially, lobbyists for the military industry complex is a bit naïve. They will get their pay in one form or another at some time in the future. Follow the money …… as usual.

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