08-19-2021, 07:56 AM
(08-19-2021, 07:24 AM)Nately120 Wrote: Biden and Trump are just short term players in the long term mess that is Afghanistan. The Soviets and the USA both took their cracks at this and both ended up walking away and seeing things regress.
The warhawks backed Biden in 2020, so the whole 21st century slate of politicians are culpable in perpetuating this ill advised venture, in my mind. It's just the way it is.
As far as Biden goes, maybe he's juat taking the inevitable lumps since he's a one term president who knows he's an instant lame duck. May be he thinks this is a great move and hrs going to run for a 2nd term...time will tell.
I'm still hoping for a two party reboot in 2024 but that's genuine delusion on my part, im sure.
The thing for me is I agree with the idea that Afghanistan was going to be a mess no matter how we left, but the one thing we could absolutely NOT do was leave like this.
Sure, no matter how we left, our operations in Afghanistan would have been seen as a failure, but the problem is since we left the way we did the conversation has shifted from just being a failed operation, to the US leaving its allies to die so we can save ourselves. That's a really bad look on our part.
Instead of getting out with some dignity we now have videos and images of people falling to their deaths from our warplanes trying to save themselves.
Like you said, Biden could be doing this as a one off presidency decision, but at what cost? We were always going to leave knowing we failed, but we should never have left looking like failures.
