Posted on 08/16/2021 8:22:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
One key point I keep returning to is: it didn’t have to be this way.
For all the fractiousness about Afghanistan over the past twenty years, finally there is unity in this opinion: What a disaster.
The situation in Kabul seems hellish. People are literally falling out of the wheel wells of C-130s, desperate to get out. The idea that a delay from the original timeline for departure would enable the U.S. and our allies to prepare looks ludicrous in hindsight, instead moving the exit into the fighting season and allowing the Taliban more time to prepare. And where is Joe Biden in all of this? On vacation, as is Jen Psaki. What a time for away messages.
In a responsible military situation, the entire brass would be out on their asses after a level of mismanagement this dire. The insulation from consequences is absurd. Whatever happened to resigning in failure? Nowadays people are only expected to resign in protest — that is, for other people’s mistakes, but never for their own. Is it time for a BRAC for generals?
Whoever Biden doesn’t fire, their performance Biden believes is acceptable. If this is acceptable, how can the American people possibly trust the NSA, CIA, or the Pentagon? Even their most recent predictions were completely off. Once again, the intel community and expert class totally failed us, predicting this would take months and the Afghan army would fight — now they’re “revising” their predictions on terrorist formation according to Milley today.
Why should we believe anything they say?
A key question here: Did Biden believe what he was saying? Go back to the speeches over the past two years, yank out all his promises about it, his denial of responsibility, assurance the Afghans would fight, etc.
Part of the issue here is that Biden is unwilling to engage in the tradeoff conversation the way Trump did — he wanted to argue that this whole thing would go well when it was clear to anyone with a brain that it wouldn’t.
The media coverage is embarrassing here as they scramble to try to make up for their prior efforts. They denounced Trump over and over again for wanting to pull out, but as soon as a Democrat gets in, they become totally fine with it — and a big part of their reaction today of hands in the air frustration is how bad the Biden administration has made them look.
It’s not about the actual consequences, it’s that they carried the water for this group being professionals and Trump’s crew being fools, and now they look like a bunch of idiots.
The Afghanistan skeptics who pointed out we were throwing good money after bad are totally vindicated by this. It is hard to imagine leaving five years ago would’ve been any worse. The wasteful spending on Afghanistan over the course of multiple administrations and military leaders resulted in a pile of apparently unused material and resources just left there for terrorists and the Taliban to try out at their leisure. It’d be nice to get a tabulation of the amount of money per minute spent on training and material to prop up an army that evaporated within days.
One key point I keep returning to is: it didn’t have to be this way.
The false choice here was Option A, stay there forever; Option B, this. But there was also Option C, which you might think of as Jacksonian withdrawal: that is, precision bomb the hell out of every Taliban camp on the way out the door, render every humvee unusable, burn every piece of material, and let the Afghans line up and execute every ISIS terrorist at Bagram. We have once again allowed a bunch of really nasty people to go free and kill again.
Why do we need to do that?
A larger question is: competence aside, if the United States is unwilling to do what is necessary to win asymmetric wars, by what moral calculus can we enter them? Part of what we talk about when we say we don’t win wars anymore is that the United States started prioritizing certain types of people’s opinions about our tactics.
Could we have won that war given the rules we now choose to follow, given a more humanitarian approach to bombing and behavior? And if we are unwilling to do what it takes to win such wars, why enter them in the first place?
Much has been made of the advances of women and children in Afghanistan since the invasion — of schools and institutions and the like. John Kerry was fond of talking about how many more Afghans had cell phone access. The whole thing turned from a terrorist-killing exercise into an attempt to transform a backward country. This, at least I hope everyone will admit, was clearly a mistake, and even those small advances will evaporate now.
I’ll have more thoughts on this in the coming days, but in the meantime, I return to this observation from John Agresto:
“Don’t all people yearn for freedom?” we have asked. And we assume the answer is yes. But the answer is no. Some people, perhaps most people, prefer other goods. Indeed, some people would rather be holy than free, or safe than free, or be instructed in how they should lead their lives rather than be free. Many prefer the comfort of strong answers already given rather than the openness and hazards of freedom. There are those who would never dream of substituting their will for the imam’s or pushing their desires over the customs and traditions of their families. Some men kiss their chains.As good Americans, we may wish to say that all people deserve freedom. But to say that all people desire it is flat-out wrong.
And, may I ask, what can we do? Oh yes, nothing.
I’m appalled by what’s happening to US via the stolen presidency & White House and the resident who resides there!
Democrats are NOT appalled....they are ECSTATIC!
It’s humans that fail. Put a bunch of them together THEN see what happens. They’re called governments.
I vote for option C
There’s a lot of people behind the face of Biden stirring this pot on an international and domestic scale.....most of it intentional as I see it. And they’re clearly prepared to take any and all of the fallout as they continue their drive forward. It’s nothing to them.
We All Should Be Appalled By What Is Happening In Afghanistan
I am, and I have been since Tora Bora. What the deep state and the perfumed princes did with our soldiers is appalling.
I am far more appalled at what is happening in DC. Or more specifically, what isn’t happening in DC. I guess events are unfolding exactly as the leaders of the US want. Now all they’ll have to do is get their puppet Biden to rouse from his stupor long enough to deliver a few barely coherent lines.
What is appalling is that anyone is surprised this is happening.
And they’re clearly prepared to take any and all of the fallout as they continue their drive forward. It’s nothing to them.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Prediction: at some point, they’re going to blame Biden ... with his cognitive decline/dementia (worse than they realized they’ll claim), he made some BAD decisions. Biden will be sacrificed on the political altar quite quickly when the DemonRats (who truly do not care about human life ... citizens, soldiers, babies et al) see a need to try to hold on to their political power/control (which is all they truly care about).
Women prefer safety to freedom. They always have, and always will. The result is the loss of both
I am.
Saw a post: Taliban telling Christian house churches that they know what they do and where they are.
Makes me ill. Trump’s would not have done things this way: everyone for himself
We should be appalled that the 2020 election was stolen by RINO-controlled state legislatures.
Personally, I’m calling it BS for public consumption.
It probably did have to happen this way in order to get rid of this unelected, illegitimate criminal enterprise that has hijacked our govt. Finally the sheeple are starting to wake up. And its going to be allowed to get worse. If you can believe it can get worse. But I’m sure we will find out soon. There’s a reason why you are hearing advice to stock up on food and water.
If you want to know why Afghanistan turned out so bad, just watch your tv.
Not the news channels.
Drag queens, women with no talent but big breasts, 50 sports channels, mansions thrown in the faces of people, drugs, a fascination with the occult and killing, etc…..
I’m not a very smart guy, so I can only be astonished that others in Washington didn’t see what I saw.
I AM appalled that the commanding heights of MY COUNTRY has been seized by a group, more than a group, a TRIBE (NO, NO, not THAT tribe) who live in fantasy, bear loyalty only to each other, regard our sons as cattle or worse to bear the burden of war on behalf of alien peoples under leaders without a shred of honor (I'm looking at you, Milley - seppuku would not have been too much, but your resignation yesterday would have at least been something).
This is the tip of the iceberg. People are crushed when unmaintained building collapse. Transcontinental distribution routes are imperiled when damaged bridges need to be closed.
In my own field, don't even get me started on the CDC.
Voting is not going to fix this. Anybody here still fixated on "demonrats" as the problem is just not paying attention.
We need a Sulla. We'd be lucky to get even a Pinochet.
We're much more likely to get Lenin, or Hitler.
This is what democracy looks like. Sauve qui peut.
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