Afghanistan

[*Nately120*]

(08-19-2021, 11:17 AM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: Wouldn't have changed anything in terms of what though?

There's two arguments going on right now.

1. Whether or not we should have withdrawn at all.
2. How we should have withdrawn.

These are two different things and people seem to be combining the two into one issue.

People continue to bring up (and when I say people I'm more so talking about general discussion amongst the public/media and not this message board specifically)  that Trump was going to withdraw anyway, but that seems to be beside the point of the real issue which is that we did not have a sound exit strategy and executed the withdrawal anyway.

Trump did in fact have a plan to withdraw, but to say "This was his plan" is not true.

Also, it seems very strange to me that Americans (and the President himself) are openly saying that the President of the United States had his hands tied with a terrorist group. Regardless of whatever Trumps plan was, the fact of the matter is Biden could have changed anything Trump wanted to do in terms of retreating from Afghanistan. To say the Presidents hands were tied is laughable.

However, Biden made clear that he was "tied to the deal" because he didn't want to end up sending more troops to Afghanistan if he were to change the deal.

Well isn't that convenient? Biden was basing his decision on a self fulfilling prophecy that he imagined himself. Ironically what is Biden doing now to save face for the disaster he started just days ago? Sending more troops back to get people out safely.

Oh...... so that thing you didn't want to happen if you renegotiated with the Taliban is.....well......now happening without the renegotiation part. This is genius stuff.

I think the main issue is how this forces us to look beyond Biden v Trump and get back into the past 40+ years of Afghanistan occupation and recall that we sided with the Taliban against both the Soviets in the 80s and Sadaam Hussein in the early 2000s.  It's just such a long-term slog that even assuming Trump winning in 2020 would have led to the most graceful exit ever seems unlikely.

I just don't see where anyone could get a slightly optimistic take out of this.