Afghanistan about to fall to taliban

Incompetent, Obama left him ISIS and he destroyed them, He left him North Korea and stopped them, he got middle east agreements, he halted China and Russia, he found a solution to the mass border crossings, he re negotiated trade deals to favor the US, and he put America first. He got a Covid vaccination out in under a year instead of five years. He accomplished all of this while being investigated for two years, and two phony impeachments, and he also lowered taxes. I will take some one like him every day and twice on Sunday. You can keep Biden and people like him.

@eoten: Funny how selective is your memory since as vice president he opposed Obama's decision to send more troops there and generally speaking since 2009 he's been consistently against it in other regions too.

@seveneleven: if ashraf ghani the president of Afghanistan ended up getting caught or dieing, the blow back for biden would have been even worse. I'm guessing biden secretly pulled out ghani in an undercover operation. It's the smartest thing he's done in the entire disaster of a situation.

GOP is politicizing the fracking SHIT out of this, and I call bullshit.

I also thought Biden's response last night was very good, and I am happy he stood his ground. He didn't politicize it or try to score points, just spoke the truth.

Gotta be logical about this, people need to be less emotional. Where the hell were all of you the last 20 years? Now you're all "Oh the poor translators! WE HAVE TO SAVE THEM"

@davillain-: pulling out of Afghanistan will be considered a popular decision but losing to the taliban, surrendering to them, getting chased out, abandoning our allies...that's going to haunt biden and I'll be shocked if trump doesn't say anything. Aside from the covid disaster, nothing of this scale ever happened for trump and his administration.

trump would be a hypocrite if he does. He wanted to be out by 1 May and he freed Taliban prisoners. One of whom is in charge now.

*Shrug* I happen to agree with Biden. Why the hell would we protect a country that wouldn't protect itself? They were trained, well-equipped, but just gift wrapped the country to the Taliban with a bow the first moment the US turns its back....

Above is one of the reasons why this debacle is worse than Vietnam. The ARVN fought unlike the Afghan army which capitulated quicker and easier than France in WWII. Supposedly the United States has wonderful intelligence agencies but man do they screw up a lot including their rosey assessment of Afghanistan. The long haul trucker from Delaware made his share of errors as well and he needs to own them by walking the walk rather than just talk. Holing up at Camp David doesn't project a strong sense of leadership nor confidence.

funny enough, if biden followed the original schedule set by trump, then things wouldn't be so bad for him. Also Trump says one thing but its never really set in stone, hes highly unpredictable. Theres no way to tell if he would have stood by his own agreement.

Actually, just losing to the taliban would still have raised a ton of questions, no matter how well the pull out happened. It would have even made trump look bad if he were still in office and if theres one thing im sure of, is that trump would have gone on a firing spree. Every general that had operations in afghan would have been called up, questioned and possibly fired.

I personally think every general that said the afghan army is highly effective and the best institution in afghanistan needs to be dragged in front of the senate

I don't know what to tell you if you believe leaving in May would have made a difference.

I was laughing watching all the afghan people clinging to this american aircraft taking off. As Biden said why should we fight a war they won’t even fight for.

**** em.

this was 2012-2013 and it was clear then that there was no way the Afghans were going to be able to protect their own country. 8 additional years of the same didn't make a difference.

The purpose of being there 20 years was what again exactly?

Apparently 98% of them are men.

Brave stuff.

It'll be fine.

@comp_atkins: wow that video paints the afghans in a really bad light. What the hell kind of training was even given?? Tax payers should ask for a refund and then some for this scam.

On the other hand this is a great documentary video and should be on Netflix.

This should sort them out. Give it a week, be showing their pronouns in their bio.

Here's the issue I have with that. Although I agree that more time there wouldn't have made much difference, the reason we were ever there in the first place was because of war mongerers like Biden. He voted for it, and he had every opportunity, with Obama to end it a decade ago. He also lied when he said the Taliban wouldn't be taking back Afghanistan, he knew the opposite to be true and he lied anyway. So him pretending to believe we should have left long ago is a joke in itself. He's a swamp creature through and through and that's why we'll either be back in Afghanistan, or find ourselves deplayed somewhere else.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/16/opinions/afghanistan-collapse-abandonment-jason-amerine/index.html

Fantastic article on what happened with Afghanistan. Apparently the real backers of the taliban are the Pakistan government. And here I thought the taliban were a group of country side backwards militia. Maybe we should have bombed the shit out of pakistan when we had the chance. Their support of the taliban at the very least puts them in the shady group, if not unforgivable. I remember back in 2000s, after 9/11, those pakistan bastards were groveling to Bush and begging for forgiveness. They now go behind our back. On top of that, I remember that to get bin laden, the US didn't even mention the operation to pakistan, who was undercover hiding him. These bastards are showing their true colors.

It also says Obama was smart, and the reason he didn't pull out 10 years ago was that he realized the situation and what would happen if they withdrew. Trump and biden are stupid in comparison. No going around it.

Assume how you avoid blaming the warmongering GOP who were in charge 20 years ago.

@uninspiredcup: i wonder why that religion has any women at all ?

All we can do is hope this generation of Taliban are moderate and also hope the US and the west stop invading other countries.

The entire middle east/afghanistan fiasco goes well beyond any one president in recent times. Hell, even Jimmy Carter was involved back in '79. All those knuckleheads bear some responsibility.

there was near unanimous approval of the 2001 authorization.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_of_2001#Senate

Congressional votes[edit]

An initial draft of Senate Joint Resolution 23Archived 2008-09-16 at the Wayback Machine included language granting the power "to deter and preempt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Members were concerned that this would provide "a blank check to go anywhere, anytime, against anyone the Bush administration or any subsequent administration deemed capable of carrying out an attack" and the language was removed.^[8]

Senate[edit]

On September 14, 2001, Senate Joint Resolution 23 passed in the Senate by roll call vote. The totals in the Senate were: 98 Ayes, 0 Nays, 2 Present/Not Voting (Senators Larry Craig, R-ID, and Jesse Helms, R-NC).

House of Representatives[edit]

On September 14, 2001, the House passed House Joint Resolution 64Archived 2008-09-16 at the Wayback Machine. The totals in the House of Representatives were 420 ayes, 1 nay and 10 not voting. The sole nay vote was by Barbara Lee, D-CA.^[9] Lee was the only member of either house of Congress to vote against the bill.^[10]

Lee opposed the wording of the AUMF, not the action it represented. She believed that a response was necessary but feared the vagueness of the document was similar to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The Tonkin act was repealed in 1970 amid discussion of its facilitation of the Vietnam war and its potential to enable a new incursion in Cambodia.^[11]

how do you even start to train someone who can't even read or write? its assumed security / police forces have some baseline level of education that wasn't present with so many of their recruits. how do you perform complicated logistical processes needed to keep things running smoothly (or at all) without basic record-keeping because people can't read/write?

how does a patrol base function when the people tasked with keeping it running sell off their own fucking supplies to make side money? " hey look at this nice wall built to keep us safe, lets pull it apart and sell it for scrap!"

@comp_atkins: Doesn't matter. My point was he blamed Democrats only. Republicans have the failure on their hands as well.

Biden owns this one in fact Obama released the current leader of the of the Taliban from Gitmo in 2014 for an American deserter with four other Taliban prisoners who promised not to rejoin the Taliban.

I disagree with education as a reason they lost. Its not like the taliban forces are highly educated or anything, they're just as badly educated. The main difference is the cause they're fighting for. Taliban were islamists fighting for their homeland and religion, while the so called afghan army were just a rag tag bunch with no cause, no real beliefs and only thing driving them was a pay check from uncle sam. The afghan government wasn't the real government for the last 20 years, it was actually the US. The US left, the afghan army and government suddenly were caught with their pants down. They had no one to look after them anymore. They didn't understand the simple fact that they should have been fighting for THEIR land. Now tons of afghans are all trying to flee the taliban, and honestly who can blame them? There are many afghans who became comfortable with more freedoms and a western way of living, who will now be forced under oppresive shariah law.

The taliban are just trying to keep a low profile for now, but I guarantee in a couple of months when the west stops paying attention, its going to be back to business. Beating the shit out of women, gays, minorities, people of different religions. Theres no helping it now, its not like we can or should go back, we burned bridges and already got a black eye from all this. But I do think we should maintain a force in afghanistan for a few purposes: to keep the taliban on their toes, and for counter terror operations.

This

Also this...

Watch Russia will return to Afghanistan.

@LJS9502_basic: this is on biden, his pathetic attempt at deflecting blame isn't fooling anyone. Nobody said it wrong to leave, but screwing up the exit to this degree is right up there at the top of the list of screw jobs. The only worse things I can think of in recent memory off the top of my head is the great recession of 2009 and covid 19.

If it were trump, the taliban would have tread far more carefully and waited before taking over. Not unless they want another MOAB dropped on them, or trump sending in troops to bash them again.

I suggest you look at the point of view of vets who served over there because they generally say this ending was inevitable. The Taliban would not have waited if trump were in charge. Once the US was on the way, they were going to act. Your posts reads like naivety.

@LJS9502_basic: bidens conference, he kept saying that we needed to get out and we shouldn't be spending American lives there. Then he kept deflecting blame to everyone else after saying he's going to take responsibility. How moronic.

Getting our ass kicked by the taliban on the way out wasn't part of the plan. And you know putin and Xi jinping are laughing there ass off. Our allies are wondering about our credibility.

You totally ignored what I said to go on your rant.

Gotta admit, that's a pretty good put down.

i don't think education is the sole reason the security forces / army melted so quickly, but it is indicative of how monumental a task getting these people up to snuff actually was. and i agree, they had no real cause to fight for. ****, a large chunk of these people probably just joined the taliban when they rolled in anyway because why not?

@comp_atkins: I doubt the taliban will be so forgiving to these people who sided with the US, so I don't think they just up and joined the other side. More likely most of the afghan soldiers are probably staying low for now, trying not to be exposed. But who knows what's happening. Only one thing is for sure, there's going to be a ton of chaos.

Curious though, how many vehicles, guns, and other weapons were left for the Taliban in the retreat? I seen a lot of them tossed their AKs and picked up US made M4s.

@eoten: I'd like to know that as well...scratch that, maybe I wouldn't. At least biden didn't give away free nukes. What a screw up.

Yeah, It seems like a lot of innocent women and children may soon be executed with US made weapons acquired because of a sloppy as **** withdrawal. That's the real concern for me. Not that we left, we should have, we should have a long time ago, but did we do correctly, or did we leave a bunch of equipment to a bunch of terrorists?

FYI the weapons etc were for the Afghan military which abandoned them. Just another misinformation spin.

I honestly am starting to feel bad for biden. Hes taking all the flack but the blame can be spread to presidents, going all the way back to GW Bush. Hes just the one most repsonsible as the sitting president.

I have no clue why elderly people want to run the country. Look at all the stress that this must be causing Biden...why even deal with it in old age, when you should be relaxing on the beach somewhere?

Not only that but didn't trump already pull most of the troops out of Afghanistan? I think I read somewhere there were only 2500 left when his administration started.

The blame could probably go back much further than that. Since the Taliban was armed, funded, and trained by the US, they've been a problem and nobody since then has done anything more than kick that can further down the road.

tough on. one the one hand, us defense contractors did make a killing selling weapons to an inept afghan army.

so there's that.

Of course, and I've always maintained that the profits of defense contractors, those making the weapons, bombs, vehicles are the primary reason we were there for 20 years in the first place. They certainly do dump a lot of money into US politics.

Aren't you a big proponent of Capitalism?

@eoten: You mean by Ronald Reagan? He funded them in the 80s to **** with the USSR.

Good times ahead.

Is that what you actually think capitalism is? Lmfao. You do understand much of the structure that supports these companies is the polar opposite of capitalist, right? All that "too big to fail" crap as well.