There is something I'm not understanding about the right wing Afghanistan narrative...

I don't really see that is interesting.

By handing Afghanistan to the Taliban, we released EVERY PRISONER in Afghanistan.

And, that was WAY more than 5,000. It was every prisoner that remained incarcerated from the work done by our military and that of Afghanistan.

 

That is the biggest piece of crap I've seen said on this thread.

The USA did NOT have the ability to take over both Kabul AND the airport.

And, the idea that we could have inserted troops to do that is NONSENSE. It just doesn't work like that.

And, that's why there was no suggestion to add more troops to control that city.

The claim made in your stupid screed, that we could have inserted troops to control Kabul, is absolute and TOTAL nonsense.

 

The obsession with Hunter is exceeded only by Trump's obsession with his daughter.

 

What am I dodging? Remind me and I will head straight at it.

 

Now that’s total nonsense. We had control of all the major cities that provided the tax base for the Afghan government. Once we abandoned the Afghan government they had no choice but to fail. We did this with few Americans supporting the Afghan military. We could have continued that until all Americans were extracted along with the ability to vet Afghans that wanted to leave.

Biden said he made the decision to leave in May. Why wait so long? Biden claimed that they planned on the Afghan govt collapsing. That is a lie after the facts for the gullible.

 

Nice bald assertion. So what you're saying is that Biden was completely and unprepared for every contingency, like he said he was. So he lied about that, too.

 

You are actually wrong about this, according to the Washington Post, who relied on an impressive number of well-placed sources, for the story.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/28/taliban-takeover-kabul/

The quick version is: Afghan President Ghani, unexpectedly flew the coop; the Afghan government quickly collapsed; there were then no longer any Afghan agencies running Kabul. When the Taliban found no security forces at the city's entrances, they met w/ U.S. military representative & laid out the two options available:
1) the U.S. take over, supplying city services & maintaining order, or
2) the Taliban would.

We told their military leader, Baradar, that we just needed the airport. President Biden obviously did not want to send in all the additional personnel, to handle the functions of all of Kabul's government agencies; this would also be providing more American targets, for Al Qaeda & Isis-K. So it was decided that the Taliban would step in, to fill the void left by the evaporation of all of Kabul's political structure. Baradar told us we could maintain our place at the airport, until the end of the month.

Besides reading the article (incognito mode, to avoid being stopped), there are also a few more details in this earlier post of mine, in a different Afghanistan thread (if you just like the way I explain things).

http://www.politicalforum.com/index...-by-republicans.591648/page-4#post-1072903660

 

Please see preceding post, #1157.
While it looked bad to me, at first, as well-- due to Afghanistan's President Ghani abandoning the country, & the Kabul government's folding, Biden's only other choice was to bring a lot more American targets back to Kabul.

 

Ann Coulter already has stating, if a fireman is trying to rescue you from a burning building and you open the window for the fireman, you aren't helping the fireman. You're helping the fireman help you. The fireman doesn't "owe" you for opening the window to help yourself.

*raspberry*

 

Very poor analogy. First, as for those who served alongside our troops, many of our service members have publicly shared stories of the Afghans' bravery, and how they saved American lives. As for the rest, it is the epitome of naivety to believe that we were in Afghanistan, just being good Samaritans. The things we wanted for their country, were also our goals. We solicited & encouraged their joining our efforts. And, should we leave them in the lurch, the next time we need locals to risk their lives to help us, we won't have them. That will mean the loss of additional U.S. lives, in the future.

So, maybe better to think it through, for yourself, rather than letting Ann Coulter handle your analysis for you.

 

LOL....Wow you are really proud of yourself, but unfortunately it is misplaced. Trumps agreement was conditional, which meant that it only applied if certain conditions were met. Those conditions specifically were NOT met.

In their agreement, "the Taliban committed to intra-Afghan talks on a peace accord that lead to a "permanent and comprehensive ceasefire," Price said. "All indications at least suggest the Taliban are instead pursuing a battlefield victory....Attacking provincial capitals and targeting civilians is inconsistent with the spirit of the agreement,"
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-...tlefield-victory-state-department-2021-08-11/

From the agreement itself...

"3. After the announcement of guarantees for a complete withdrawal of foreign forces and timeline in the presence of international witnesses, and guarantees and the announcement in the presence of international witnesses that Afghan soil will not be used against the security of the United States and its allies, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will start intra-Afghan negotiations with Afghan sides on March 10, 2020, which corresponds to Rajab 15, 1441 on the Hijri Lunar calendar and Hoot 20, 1398 on the Hijri Solar calendar.

4. A permanent and comprehensive ceasefire will be an item on the agenda of the intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations. The participants of intra-Afghan negotiations will discuss the date and modalities of a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire, including joint implementation mechanisms, which will be announced along with the completion and agreement over the future political roadmap of Afghanistan."



This is a THE critical aspect of this agreement, and it is written in such a way that one could drive a truck through the resulting hole to find justification to withdraw from that agreement at any time. This entire notion of Biden's hands were tied is unmitigated Bullsh*it. To say that the spirit of this agreement was not met is a colossal understatement. There has been basically zero progress in these peace talks which began last year, with the Taliban clearly moving toward a military takeover for basically the entirety of 2021. As such, the notion of us being bound via agreement to remove ourselves from our military bases is nonsense. With them clearly moving toward a military takeover, the notion of us removing ourselves from our last airbase is truly NONSENSICAL. The only requirement would be to declare that they are not negotiating in good faith, and being the far superior military power, we simply declare that they have broken the agreement and that we are going to continue to do whatever we damned well please.

This nonsense of our hands being bound by a piece of thread and then pretending like we cannot get out of these handcuffs is laughable. I have watched you try to pass off this trifling BS in your thread on this very subject. Nobody is buying it. Not even the leftist American media, nor Independents and most certainly not Republicans. You may find a fair amount of Dems that buy it, but lets face it, they will buy any defense. There is absolutely NOTHING that precluded Biden from doing as he pleased, and given the uncooperative stance from the Taliban that has showed their hand during these negotiations, to not back out is downright negligent. What we see now is the catastrophic result of that negligence.

Biden has no one to blame other than himself. That doesnt mean however that you wont continue furiously typing on your keyboard convincing yourself to the contrary. Much like the lawyer for a clearly guilty defendant, you have done your best to make your case. Unfortunately, the jury is not stupid and your defendant has been deemed guilty.

 

My problem is that as the worlds pre eminent fighting force, they have not done WHATEVER IT TAKES in order to safely withdraw all of our citizens, allies and equipment in an orderly fashion.

Providing air support to our Afghan allies out of Bagram would have surely slowed or even stopped the rapid Taliban takeover, and as it turned out, it looks like it may have been handy to have a second less dense location for extractions. Whatever their decision/tactics, they needed to have the underlying philosophy of "whatever it takes" when creating those military plans. Personally, I do not care if they accomplished their goal with tricycles out of Turkmenistan as long as it ensured an orderly withdrawal of our citizens, allies and equipment. As the strongest military in the world clearly there are many different ways to skin the same cat. They did not skin the cat.

What about this do you find so utterly confusing?

 

I don't want to take credit for her analogy, which I think still fits. That's why I credited her with the statement.
Maybe to avoid US loss of life, we should stop sending blood and treasure all over the world into conflicts that do not present clear and present dangers to us. I don't think the US has had a Congressionally declared war since WW2. Heads should be rolling.
https://www.senate.gov/about/powers...l,policy through appropriations and oversight.

 

Had he evacuated prior to the Taliban occupying Kabul, no troops would have been needed. Biden tried to make a political statement by leaving on 9/11 and 13 warfighters paid the price.

 

The WPost blog proposes that the decision made in Afghanistan to defend HKIA rather than Kabul/embassy mistakenly ignored the option to bring in more troops and protect both.

But, the WPost blog links to an actual report that doesn't show that as a likely possibility, as the timeframe in volved was immediate. The blogger can not legitimately claim that it would have been possible to bring in troops to defend a rapidly collapsing Kabul, the embassy (where personnel were already working hard to destroy all documents and equipment) and still defend the airport. Our military simply did not see it that way, and second guessing them is not acceptable.

TRUMP planned on Afghanistan collapsing, obviously. Biden just didn't change that assumption.

 

That's the partisan politics in you.

Anything that you don't like you call a lie, regardless of whether it is true.

 

Did he say he was prepared for every contingency? (actually, he said constituency first, then corrected himself, because his brain doesn't work right)
Yes he did.
Was he prepared?
No he wasn't.

He lied.

 

Trump did not. That’s a silly opinion. Hell, Biden didn’t plan on it either.

 

You aren't thinking anymore.

Ghani was gone. Afghan security was gone. Our embassy was gone. The option for a transitional government was gone. The Taliban were beyond the security checkpoints around Kabul with no opposition of any kind.

The Taliban were so unconcerned about US troops providing security in Kabul that they voluntarily brought up that idea and OFFERED THAT TO US!!

Suggesting we had something to gain by dividing our forces against the two different missions (Kabul/embassy and airport) is preposterous. And, the same goes for bringing troops from the US to be stationed in Kabul - from where we would then need to extract them!

Afghanistan was GONE to us way before that time.

If we wanted it back, we would have needed to call for the military to create a plan for retaking Afghanistan from the Taliban and for starting a brand new "nation building" project from the ground up.

 

That was absolutely NOT a lie.

You don't even have a clue what "lie" means!!!

 

There is NO CHANCE that Trump could have thought that Afghanistan would stand after removing all our allies, our coalition partners, and all our troops.

NOBODY is THAT stupid.

 

Uh, we just had a release of a phone call today where Biden was talking to the Afghan President telling him to lie about how badly they were doing against the Taliban.

Clearly, they were not prepared for every contingency.
Clearly, Biden said they were anyway.
A lie.

Then Biden got on TV and said that he had faith in the Afghan army, lol.
Another lie, as the phone call proves.

 

From your reply, you aren't comprehending what you are reading, (anymore). Your post, to which I replied, claimed that we had NO OPTION to insert more U.S. troops. My providing you with the report of the meeting in which the Taliban offered that option to us, was just a fact-check, to give you a more accurate understanding than, "it just doesn't work like that." That is nothing at all like saying that I believed we should HAVE TAKEN that option. Can you not discern the difference?

WillReadmore said: ↑
And, the idea that we could have inserted troops to do that is NONSENSE. It just doesn't work like that.

And, that's why there was no suggestion to add more troops to control that city.

The claim made in your stupid screed, that we could have inserted troops to control Kabul, is absolute and TOTAL nonsense.

<End Snip>

These statements of yours were false. Rather than countering 21Bronco's contentions intelligently, by explaining why inserting more troops was undesirable-- as I, in my post, did quickly allude, by calling these prospective, additional troops, "more American targets," for Al Qaeda & Isis-K-- you were erroneously calling his contention, "total nonsense."

Have I, once again, overestimated your ability for the subtlety of thought to make this distinction, between my correcting one of your ideas, and opposing your overall point of view?

The majority of your reply is no more than a regurgitation of the very facts, of which I had made you aware. Then you get to this part, which is an utter fabrication of my intentions, by you:

What is preposterous, is your suggesting that I had suggested any such thing. Please highlight my specific words that lead you to such a conclusion, if you believe I am wrong about this.

 

I completely agree with your point here, that a single office-holder was never intended, in our system of government, to have the power to launch us on a 20-year war, without Congressional mandate.
But that is a totally separate issue, from fulfilling our obligations to our Afghan war allies.

 

You made no such distinction, and the reference was to that meeting.

If you had wanted to make a larger point, then using that meeting as an example was a blunder on your part.

I see NO reason to suspect Bronco is interested in explanation in any of his posts.

However, I did go back to explain.

I'm totally sorry if I misconstrued your intentions.