I don’t disagree, but they will get trained enough to use night vision equipment, mortars, artillery, etc. Regarding M16’s, etc. they are much more accurate than the AK the Taliban had, plus their weaponry was pretty well past it’s service life. And I don’t believe the China, Russia, Taliban are new BFF’s. They will be killing them too. Give them time. Iran may play a role, though. Afghanistan’s victors simply want to return to their misogynistic perverted ways where “unwoke men were men and women were poker chips”
Biden lied his ass off claiming there was no Trump plan on this issue. I blame Biden for demoralizing the huge army Afghanistan had. Biden claimed they would not lose.
Beau forgot one major issue. If a Taliban does not have a .50 Cal machine gun, he can't harm you with one. If you hand him one, then he may still need training as our men do, but now he has the deadly weapon. Night vision our forces brag means we own the night. We are no longer close to Afghanistan. We no longer own the night.
We didn’t lose Afghanistan, we abandoned it after 20 years — two trillion US taxpayer dollars — 2,401 United States military deaths — 20,752 injured personnel He swore to get us out of Afghanistan, I am glad we finally had a president that kept his word.
I'm not interested in putting lipstick on the Biden pig and what I'll be doing next is not that. I've expressed numerous times that Biden should resign over this (I know he won't). But there are nuances. I think Biden is fully responsible for this poorly planned withdrawal that resulted in 13 American troops and many Afghans getting killed, some Americans and allies being left behind, and some functioning armament being left behind. I'm very angry at him for this. But I think it's naïve and/or partisan to assume that ALL the blame should be assigned to Biden and NONE to anybody else. This is not a black-and-white situation. Also it needs to be acknowledged that at least, as messy as this was, Biden was the only one out of four presidents who did not kick this can down the road to the next guy. The American people did want the end of our involvement there and the end of the nation-building experiment and at least Biden got it done, although in a messy and incompetent way. Biden presided over this situation for 7 months... his predecessors presided over it for almost 20 years, so to assign 100% of the blame to Biden and 0% to others is preposterous. Not to forget, there were failures from the Pentagon and the Intelligence Community too; Biden was given wrong advice on how long it would take for the Taliban to take over. I guess if he had been told "Mr. President, the Taliban will take over in a matter of days" then maybe he'd have started the withdrawal sooner while Kabul was still being controlled by the American military and the Afghan national forces, and the withdrawal in this case would have been much smoother, hopefully with no casualties. Also, partisan people seem to conveniently forget that Trump invited Taliban leaders to America, signed a treaty with them, and released many of them (including dangerous terrorists) from prison; he also decreased our troops there to 2,500 soldiers which was insufficient to ensure a safe withdrawal, and Biden actually had to send more. Obama kicked the can down the road. Bush started the whole thing and took the eyes off the ball when he went to Iraq instead. So I think your options should have been: 1) Biden was wrong and nobody else was wrong; 100% of the blame is to be assigned to Biden and to nobody else. 2) Biden was wrong in some things and right in some other things but the blame for the wrong parts is still 100% his. 3) Biden was wrong in some things and right in some other things but his predecessors, the Pentagon, and the Intelligence Community were also wrong so there is plenty of blame to be assigned to several people for each of their shortcomings that contributed to the situation (that is, the blame for the messy withdrawal is Biden's but there were others who contributed to this, through past or present failures). 4) Good job Biden; he isn't to blame for anything; he got us out; any withdrawal is messy anyway; troops die, such is the nature of war; it could have been even worse; he got bad advice anyway. So I imagine that partisan Republicans would pick #1 and the least radical among them would pick #2; centrists/moderates/independents like me and the least radical among Democrats would pick #3, and partisan Democrats would pick #4. You'd get a much more accurate reading of the various positions Americans have on this. Sometimes simplification is not the way to go, when a situation is complex enough to require nuances.
Good job. I did not want to so muddy the waters that the poll had no value at all. I like to post a number options as you did but the fire still is aimed my way no matter how I do the poll. I believe the term independent means swinging the Democrats way a lot. I don't swing that way one bit. I spent decades as a loyal to Democrats party member. I decided when I got out, to stay out. They have not persuaded me to return. I will say this about your suggestion. It makes sense and is rational. But this forum has the majority on both sides very partisan posters.
True. Me, an independent, I did lean Democrat this last election (not entirely; I did vote for Biden as the lesser of two evils - something that I now regret; I wouldn't have voted for Trump but I could have abstained or voted third party if I knew then what I know now - but also voted for my state's Republican senator), but I'm not likely to lean Democrat again next election, as I'm disappointed in Biden for various reasons: the messy Afghanistan withdrawal, inflation, messy situation at the border, and his CDC committing blunders.
Biden didn't make them stronger; Trump did when he signed an agreement (which the gov't of Afghanistan had no involvement in) to pull our troops out of Afghanistan in the first place.