As soon as he finished his address to the nation, Biden got on Marine One and headed back to Camp David
Wall Street Journal editorial: Biden to Afghanistan: Drop Dead
Biden is defiant in blaming others for his Afghan debacle.
President Biden told the world on Monday that he doesn’t regret his decision to withdraw rapidly from Afghanistan, or even the chaotic, incompetent way the withdrawal has been executed. He is determined in retreat, defiant in surrender, and confident in the rightness of consigning the country to jihadist rule. We doubt the world will see it the same way in the days, months and years ahead.
Mr. Biden refused to accept responsibility for the botched withdrawal while blaming others. He blamed Donald Trump’s peace deal with the Taliban and falsely claimed again that he was trapped. He blamed his three predecessors for not getting out of Afghanistan. He blamed the Afghans for not fighting hard enough, their leaders for fleeing, and even Afghans who helped us for not leaving sooner. The one group he conspicuously did not blame was the Taliban, who once harbored Osama bin Laden and may protect his terrorist successor.
The President made glancing reference to the horrible scenes unfolding in Kabul and especially at the airport, though again without addressing the mistakes that led to them. Had the U.S. not given up the air base at Bagram, now controlled by the Taliban, the U.S. would not now have to fight to control Kabul’s commercial airfield.
The chaotic scenes at the airport, with Afghans hanging from a U.S. military plane and two falling from the sky to their deaths, will be the indelible images of this debacle. They are the echo of 9/11, with people falling from the sky, that Mr. Biden didn’t anticipate when he chose the 20th anniversary of 9/11 as his withdrawal deadline.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: It is a shame that the above WSJ editorial is behind a paywall. It is the best piece that I have read on President Biden's Monday speech on Afghanistan. But it is Bill Roggio founder of The Long War Journal who says it best .... "The world has seen a President portraying surrender as an act of political courage, and retreat as strategic wisdom."
7 comments:
The Failure of the 'Adults in the Room'
"There is no land route to U.S forces there. Every ton of concrete, round of ammunition, Humvee and truck had to be shipped in through Iran, Russia, and Pakistan, the privilege of which was paid for by U.S. taxpayers, or else there would be ambushes along the way. This was convenient for the administration’s advocates of engaging Iran and Pakistan because it was a convenient channel for incentives.
It had the effect of funding the Taliban because, in case you didn’t know, the Taliban was created by Pakistan’s ISI and had sanctuary in Pakistan." - Fernandez
Fernandez is right. We should be out of Afghanistan. How you get out matters. Biden flubbed it. He pulled out the rearguard first.
Most people wanted to leave, that's why they supported trump
People mostly criticized HOW the troops left, it was too chaotic, too abrupt and too many up to 80,000 translators and helpers were left behind to be slaughtered. That's a city, killed, in a few days, brutally murdered.
And the following refugee crisis...
And the following terrorism..
And the costs..2+trillion and counting.. that's the cost of 200 modern aircraft carriers. 20 times more than the US has right now.
It's a geopolitical disaster for the West, but it didn't start or occur over a weekend.
20 years of dysfunction in US government and military and Pentagon plans and financial responsibility... THIS is only the beginning of the collapse of the American empire and the destruction that will follow suit
And importantly, it's a gut punch to the US military veterans and also its allies...
Horrible strategy
Nothing learned after Vietnam
Complete chaos when they left
Thousands of veterans killed and maimed and traumatised and disillusioned....
It feels premeditated
You cannot be THAT incompetent
Civilians knew years ago how this would end
But the Pentagon and white house and think tanks didn't?
Come on
It's too bring down the USA, that's what many veterans think, and I happen to agree
That Trump-era deal between the U.S. and the Taliban called for a withdrawal of troops by May 2021.
Separately, Trump, after losing the election, signed a secret memo to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan before Biden took office, as Axios' Jonathan Swan and Zachary Basu reported. But after some Trump officials became aware of “an off-the-books operation by the commander in chief himself,” they eventually persuaded Trump to keep some 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.
After all of that, the senior Biden officials said, Trump effectively didn't have a plan to bring all Americans including troops, contractors and diplomats home safely. One said that created "headwinds" and "unnecessarily increased" the degree of difficulty for the new administration.
"The entire policy process had atrophied," one of the officials said. "It was really manifest here.
“On the one hand, they set a May deadline for withdrawal,” the official said. “On the other hand, there was no interagency planning on how to execute a withdrawal."
The bottom line: Biden officials aren't directly blaming Trump for how events unfolded in Kabul.
But they do want to challenge what they see as bad-faith arguments from Trump officials making the case that they would have presided over a more orderly withdrawal.
Editor--
Trump wanted us out. That was ok. Biden got out and that is not ok?what is your position, other than bad-mouthing Biden:
Stay in Afghanistan?
Leave as Trump planned?
Editor--
Trump wanted us out. That was ok. Biden got out and that is not ok?what is your position, other than bad-mouthing Biden:
Stay in Afghanistan?
Leave as Trump planned?
Signed Missy Le Pew
Position is:
1) Leave Afghanistan
1a) Process and evacuate eligible Civilians first
1b) Process and evacuate American rearguard soldiers second
2) Stop all aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan
Note it is not a foregone conclusion that the rearguard soldier are allowed to leave Afghandistan. they have to take a COVID test first even if vaccinated. they might have a delta or lambda variant.
Can you imagine how mad Democrats would be, if even one American solider would come out of Afghanistan while having COVID?
We do not want Democrats drag us through a 2nd civil war, so we must kiss ass, when it comes to COVID!
Glad we're out. Anyone who wanted to stay in the forever war was paying none of the costs for it.
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