We should, one of my past coworkers was a refugee.
Yeah... pulling out was only gonna leave a power vacuum that would be filled by the Taliban. I may not like the idea of us being over there but leaving was only gonna lead to worse tragedy.
People were trying to leave on US's planes, some of them grabbed onto the planes but fell off while in the sky. It was horrible to watch
And the rationale that Biden used is fucked up. How is he going to just tell Afghans to fight their own battles when we're the reason why it even exists in the first place? What's humane about abandoning Afghans?
Leaving Afghanistan was a Biden campaign promise and something every president since Bush had tried to pull off. Add to that this being something which I am pretty sure the vast majority of people supported right up until the Taliban took over the country's government which was evidently made out of wet toilet paper... I do believe framing this as exclusively biden's fault is unfair. He certainly made a huge blunder here, one that will probably haunt him and even the democratic party for years to come... but Afghanistan was a massive fuckup since the very day it was invaded. This is a blunder 20 years in the making and it's fairly clear that it wouldn't have matter which party is in power in the case of a US retreat.
But Biden could have also reconsidered after seeing what it was like in Afghanistan, and he also said to let the people fend for themselves, against problems created by USA.
This really depends on what information Biden was working with. As far as I can tell within the military and intelligence agencies there was at least moderate confidence that the Afghan government would at least be able to hold out for a year or two in a worst case scenario. So... what was Biden supposed to do here? Stay in Afghanistan in spite of the counsel he received on it (with this apparently being that this wouldn't immediately turn into a huge shitstorm)? Stay in Afghanistan in spite of the military withdrawal that began during trump's administration? Stay in Afghanistan in spite of the fact that he promised during his campaign that he would finally end this? Withdrawing from Afghanistan was a popular move until it wasn't because hindsight is 20/20...
I wasn't necessarily insinuating that, just that it seems like all of the work/money that has gone into what we've been doing there in the last 20 years was completely pointless. But I'm also coming from a standpoint that I don't think military occupation or imperialism is aspirational either. I don't think there are any good solutions honestly.
Ah, no, I didn't think you were insinuating that either. It's just... this is frustrating, specially as you say there simply aren't good solutions. The conspiracy angle at least gives this some semblance of meaning. And yeah, there aren't any good solutions. The alternative to this was the US staying there an extra 20 years. I suppose the big questions for now will be whether the taliban can remain in power and actually govern...
People keep on bringing up what Truman did with Japan, as if that being a "success story" justifies staying there indefinitely. It's just a mess.
President fleeing the country and the folks just giving up just means they had no heart to fight. You can give someone all the resources and training but if they dont care about the mission they wont do it.
To be fair, no one gives a a flying anything about what you say now either. Not that it's relevant or anything....Around 15+ years ago, during the 2nd gulf war.
The cost for washing 1 load of laundry for US soldiers stationed in iraq was $100.
I said: this is not normal, this is bad.
No one gave a flying -beep-. Until now it seems.
Possibly correct, or it was possibly bullshit to justify pulling out. Biden should have stayed after seeing Taliban push further in Afghanistan, and he could have said that the promise was made before things got this bad. Had shit not hit the fan, then withdrawing would have remained a popular move, probably.
Either USA knew this would happen, or they had no idea just how quickly the Afghan fighters would lose hope.
Few sources say that they found it a difficult battle and hard to keep morale up due to corruption from their own government and police forces, who could also easily be bought by Taliban.
I don't think this was an option after the US left. Afghan forces largely didn't even put up a fight and even their leaders pretty much just fled. Most notably the afghan president. So if Biden had decided to have their forces return... whom would they have helped? Whom would they have supported? Far from my area of expertise so take this as you will but would simply redeploying the forces there even work? To me it sounds like they would have needed a full scale invasion of afghanistan to come back from this.
Afghan people who couldn't escape... The ones in danger from the Taliban.