How are u posted:

I wholeheartedly agree. The Biden admin hosed this up. The blood of those collaborators, who risked their lives for us, is on their hands. I'm pretty loving furious.

quote:

As I recently wrote, Biden has a relevant personal history. In April 1975, as a first-term senator, he was an outspoken opponent of using American money and risking Americans’ safety to rescue the tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who had bet their lives on American promises. “The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese,” he said in a Senate speech. President Gerald Ford tried to sway Biden by reminding him of the American tradition of welcoming refugees from war and oppression, but Biden was unmoved. Vietnam was a lost cause, and Americans wanted to forget.

As South Vietnam fell, 135,000 endangered Vietnamese were evacuated through the heroic efforts of American officials, military veterans, and private citizens. Ford later said, “To do anything less would, in my opinion, only add moral shame to military humiliation.” Those refugees and their descendants are now Americans. I doubt that Biden would wish it otherwise.

Biden failed to see a moral obligation in 1975. Today he can learn from the mistake and redeem it. Seventeen thousand Afghans who have worked for America in Afghanistan, along with tens of thousands of their family members, are waiting for the excruciatingly slow bureaucratic wheels of the U.S. government to process their visa applications. At the normal pace, they will still be waiting years after the last American troops leave their country. While they wait, trying to hide, many of them will be hunted down by the Taliban. We will be gone, and Afghans who believed our promises will be killed. Our war will be over—Americans might not even hear the news of their deaths.

Once South Vietnam began to collapse, in the spring of 1975, the end came with shocking speed, and the Ford administration had just weeks to organize evacuations. In Afghanistan, the Biden administration has given itself almost five months. That’s enough time to save thousands of Afghans who risked everything to help the United States in their country. But there isn’t enough time to save them just by speeding up the review of visa applications. These Afghans have to be extricated from the country and taken to an overseas U.S. military base, where their cases can be heard in safety, beyond the reach of the Taliban. This is what is sometimes called “the Guam option,” after a U.S. rescue operation that saved thousands of Iraqi Kurds from Saddam Hussein in the 1990s by airlifting them to Guam. Biden should create a task force with a team of military and civilian officials from key agencies to plan and run the operation. By ordinary government standards, such an effort is unimaginable. By the standards of the U.S. military, with its code of leaving no one behind on the battlefield, any alternative is unthinkable.

EngineerJoe posted:

Yeah, give credit where it is due, Biden had the guts to take the political hit from pulling out and Obama didn't.

Zedsdeadbaby posted:

I just cannot fathom how spectacular this failure is. I wonder if the US genuinely did not expect to see how badly this reflects on them, in the long term.

Dapper_Swindler posted:

and biden told Obama to pull the gently caress out and couple times during his presidency. His big gently caress up(partly his, partly just 20 other fires to put out domestically and etc) is not getting as many people out as possible right after he made that announcement(if not before hand) now maybe we did get a bunch of people out before the implosion. but i do think neither biden nor IC nor State expected it to implode this fast even though they should have. i am sure we will get some giant tome of a book laying out where each admin went wrong in like 20 years or so. perosnally i blame the pentagon for basicaly keeping everything underwraps and then when called on it, pretending everything was cool until someone finally said "if its so cool then, we dont need to be here".

Randarkman posted:

I'm going to say that the excessive focus on the Afghan security forces in terms of spending and effort compared to buildling civilian economic and political infrastructure is why this whole thing crumpled as it did. It takes more to make a resilient state than just pumping loads of money into trying to create a 'modern' military force in a country that completely lacks the economic, social and instiutional means to actually support such an army.

How are u posted:

I wholeheartedly agree. The Biden admin hosed this up. The blood of those collaborators, who risked their lives for us, is on their hands. I'm pretty loving furious.

Craptacular! posted:

This is such a loving atrocity. How are we unable to do this now and not, say, leave when the tyrant taking power was literally anyone else? Even the local warlords who stepped in the power vacuum for a time would be better than this because they would be against each other.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

The Pentagon is to blame, sure, but don't forget successive US Congresses making it more and more powerful while moving farther and farther away from executing any kind of oversight over it.

Bel Shazar posted:

If you haven’t realized it yet we reeeeeeeealy don’t give a poo poo about what the rest of you think. We don’t even really care what most of US think.

QuoProQuid posted:

i would hesitate to grant biden any kudos for making the decision to leave afghanistan given the obvious failure to relocate Afghan allies who will, taliban promises aside, likely suffer and die because the admin did not move fast enough and did not prioritize it relative to other goals

Absurd Alhazred posted:

The Pentagon is to blame, sure, but don't forget successive US Congresses making it more and more powerful while moving farther and farther away from executing any kind of oversight over it.

Joe Biden, in 2007 posted:

BIDEN: Success in Afghanistan is Still Possible … if We Surge Forces Anywhere, it Should be in Afghanistan, not Iraq.

Today we face an issue “at the very heart of our war on terror: the deteriorating security conditions in Afghanistan. If current trends continue, we may soon find that our hard-won success on the battlefield has melted away.”

I didn’t write these words in preparation for this morning’s hearing. I spoke them nearly five years ago, on the floor of the United States Senate. [May 17, 2002]

I’m not bringing up old quotes to say, “I told you so,” but to make a simple point: the situation in Afghanistan is not an unforeseen circumstance. Plenty of military and civilian officials have been predicting exactly this outcome for years.

What’s the state of play? Osama bin Laden remains at large, right across the border in Pakistan in all probability. There are reports that he’s reconstituted his terrorist training camps. Given the chance to kill him at Tora Bora, the administration instead pulled most of our Special Forces, our CIA teams and Predators and sent them to Iraq.

The Taliban is back -- and keeping much of Afghanistan ungovernable. Suicide bombings, IEDs and other techniques imported from Iraq made last year the bloodiest since their ouster.

The government of Pakistan turns a blind eye to the Taliban cross-border attacks, and to the high command based in Quetta. Just last year, the government signed a “separate peace” with pro-Taliban militias in Waziristan.

Afghan reconstruction is stuck in first gear. President Bush promised a Marshall Plan, but he's delivered less development aid in the past five years than we spend on the war in Iraq every three weeks.

Last year Afghanistan produced 92% of the world’s opium. The proceeds prop up the Taliban, warlords and corrupt officials. There’s no serious counter-narcotics program. If the Administration pursues a poorly-conceived aerial poppy eradication plan, the results could be even worse.

Don’t get me wrong—we’ve accomplished some great things. Because of our efforts, millions of Afghan children are in school today. We’ve built roads and clinics. We’ve got American troops in Provincial Reconstruction Teams showing that the US military can be a wonderful friend as well as a fearsome enemy.

President Bush last month made two encouraging statements. First, he announced the deployment of an additional combat brigade to Afghanistan. This is important, because our NATO commanders desperately need not only several thousand battle-ready troops, but the helicopters, transport aircraft, and other military hardware that go with them. Second, he pledged $11.8 billion in new funding over the next two years. If these figures represent new funding in addition to currently-budgeted numbers, and if we focus on projects which bring real improvement to the lives of ordinary Afghans—this may be the start of a more successful strategy.

I certainly hope so. Because in Afghanistan, success still is possible. Failure is not thinkable. How can we turn things around? Very briefly, we need to do three things:

First, establish security. If we should be surging forces anywhere, it’s in Afghanistan, not Iraq. NATO troops are necessary, but not sufficient. We’ve also got to train the Afghan police and army—which means, for starters, paying them decent salaries.

Second, we have get moving on reconstruction. We need more funds, and we need to use them better. The Afghans are patient, but they’re not seeing reconstruction worthy of a superpower. As Gen. Eikenberry has said, “Where the road ends, the Taliban begins.”

Third, do counter-narcotics right. We should target multimillion-dollar drug kingpins, not the dollar-a-day opium farmers. Someday aerial eradication may have a place—but not until we’ve got alternate livelihoods set up for those growing poppy, and a judicial system capable of taking down the drug barons. Until then, we should focus on the top of the food-chain, not the bottom.

We have three witnesses today who can explain these issues in detail, with authority and expertise. First, we have Richard Boucher the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia. We all know and respect him as a straight shooter.

Next we have Gen. James Jones who recently retired from the U.S. Marine Corps. Gen. Jones was the commander of NATO until early this year, and he supervised the 23 Alliance’s expansion to include responsibility for all of Afghanistan. And then we have Ambassador James Dobbins, currently at the RAND Corporation, who has served as Special Envoy for Afghanistan. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he served as liaison to the Afghan forces fighting alongside our troops to bring down the Taliban. Gentlemen welcome and I’ll now turn it over to Sen. Lugar for his opening statement.

Nix Panicus posted:

Hopefully the rest of the world finally internalizes the lesson that cooperation with the US never leads to good outcomes. Fight the evil American empire at every turn and make whatever alliances are necessary to resist US infiltration.

Thom12255 posted:

Biden did the same thing in Vietnam where he steadfastly refused to take in refugees even with Ford telling him he was being a huge dick.

Zedsdeadbaby posted:

If you don't give a poo poo, why do you guys try to play world police all the time. This is just an obnoxious attitude to have, and really sums up why Americans are universally loathed outside of the US.

Thom12255 posted:

Another proud graduate of Gitmo.

https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1426989769280659459

Grip it and rip it posted:

Seems like they propped up a regime pretty easily for 2 decades.

Do you have some examples of legitimate governmental institutions that have engaged in similar efforts of nation building in recent history? My admittedly limited recall of recent international history suggests that puppet regimes dont generally last long after their support departs. I dont think its a uniquely American problem

no hay camino posted:

It's very weird that we're basically seeing the Fall of Saigon II but your average person doesn't know and doesn't give a poo poo.

Thom12255 posted:

Another proud graduate of Gitmo.

https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1426989769280659459

Bel Shazar posted:

If you haven’t realized it yet we reeeeeeeealy don’t give a poo poo about what the rest of you think. We don’t even really care what most of US think.

Vasukhani posted:

lilljonas posted:

lol, just lol, if you did not know that USA was insanely incompetent at nation building before August 2021.

Vasukhani posted:

Discospawn posted:

"Airport is taking fire, we're sending troops to take care of it."

"Troops are taking fire, we're sending in more troops to take care of it."

"More troops, more fire. Moretroopsmorefire. MortroopmorfarMORTROOPMORFAR!"

It has the potential to be like the scene from Return of the Living Dead where the zombies keep requesting more ambulances for the brains.

Anybody who wants to attack Western targets knows that Kabul is the best place to do it right now, and ironically the Taliban are the only organized force with the position/resources to prevent those kinds of threats from loving everything up.

If the US is able to offer them enough money, I wouldn't be surprised if we see Taliban troops forming a defensive perimeter around the US evacuation areas to help them complete their withdrawal. They may not have greeted us as liberators, but maybe they'll wish us a fond farewell as their guests.

Vasukhani posted:

https://twitter.com/LucasFoxNews/status/1426995373520924675

Rent-A-Cop posted:

We are now invading Afghanistan in order to facilitate our retreat from Afghanistan.

We are a very smart country.

Sinteres posted:

Yeah even the most generous interpretation of what's going on and how it reflects on Biden has to say evacuating the military before the embassy was a huge mistake in retrospect. Everyone's probably going to be fine (on our end), but the process is still hosed.

Vasukhani posted:

https://twitter.com/LucasFoxNews/status/1426995373520924675

Mustard Iceman posted:

Airport is probably gonna be renamed fairly soon.

Mustard Iceman posted:

Airport is probably gonna be renamed fairly soon.