The Batlord

Wrong about what? You're the one obsessed with whether or not the withdrawal is botched. I'm the one more concerned with 20 years of incompetence that aren't going to be 30 or 50 or 100 years of incompetence and didn't really expect to end all this with an uncharacteristic flourish of capability anyway. The media just seems to be butthurt that ending the war implies it was a bad war which implies they should have been actually talking about getting out all this time rather than feeling like great white saviors of democracy for uplifting the savages, so maybe you shouldn't take them so seriously.

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TheBig3

I'm saying intelligence from the NatSec apparatus wasn't to be trusted because they have a long-term interest in staying. As far as I know, the troops on the ground there were warned ISIS-k would try and strike on the way out. I don't know that it's true but I think Biden has shown on this front and on others he learned a lot from how they screwed over Obama.

Look, i definitely did that New Englander thing where I watched the news and said "Jesus Christ, I could have done better than this ****ing guy" but after I acknowledge it was bad, then what? Do I say we should impeach him in case he tries to withdraw from Afghanistan again? I've liked everything else he's been doing so far. I wish he'd do more but he's done the one thing the Democrats always **** up which is making the GOP choke on their non-scandals. He's trapped them between Suburban Independents and their base, and it's nice to see a Democrat no steal defeat from the jaws of victory.

I do wish, back to policy, he's do something about college tuition, criminal justice reform, and regional rail, but politics is politics and he shouldn't until after the midterms, or you'll only give the House back to this current GOP.

Shutout to Texas for taking the heat off the withdrawal by the way. They're doing what their base wants at the cost of national elections and we love you for it.

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jwb

you use the 20 years blah blah blah to deflect from the fact that it was botched and you're irritated that it's not the good headline and press it was meant to be.

I'm also kinda irritated at that because it should've been a W and you can say maybe long term it will be but right this second it's not. That's just the reality.

The media is covering it as such because that's the reality staring us in the face when we tune into Afghanistan and because that's going to garner a lot more attention than if they swept it under the rug and just did a Bush style mission accomplished news cycle

In retrospect it was obviously a bad move to try to occupy in the first place but after 9/11 there was nobody who was really going to oppose the war, Biden included.

jwb

the thing is if they really had the intelligence that it was going to fall as quickly as it did you would've expected they would have made more preparations for that and had reinforcements ready to handle that situation. The most plausible reason for not doing so it's that they miscalculated the risks involved. Possibly there were also optical reasons why they didn't want to send more reinforcements preemptively because that would be implicitly admitting they had no confidence at all in the Afghan forces and were knowingly abandoning allies in that country to impending doom. Either way you slice it that reads like a **** up as far as I'm concerned.

Should we impeach? No. Should he resign? Nope. That would be an even bigger mistake. Sorry that the headline isn't positive but that's just the way it goes.

Psy-Fi

If Only We’d Listened to Representative Barbara Lee

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The Batlord

That same media could have shown an ounce of interest in Afghanistan over the past decade and not have to look too hard to see how useless our occupation was. The Afghanistan Papers have been out since 2015. The complete failure of our colonial project isn't some new thing we're being blindsided by, and the media whose job it should have been to ring the alarm bells about what was going on were largely silent because A) they don't actually care about Afghanistan no matter how much they're bleating now, and B) they support and are complicit with US hegemony and saying anything against that would conflict with their own worldview.

So making this all about the pullout rather than 20 years of failure shifts the blame from US imperialism to just Biden's current mistakes and allows them to remain the responsible shepherds of truth they want to be seen as rather than incompetent collaborators with a government who makes them feel important by letting them sit in the White House for press briefings and embedding them within the military to take state sponsored guided tours of war zones.

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jwb

you make it sound like the medias job is to educate or even to give us the correct political takes

Their job is to sell papers, sell clicks, sell headlines. That's the way it's always been. When people are falling from planes trying to escape that's just a way juicer story than some sorta somber reflection on imperialism.

I understand why you say they "implicitly support hegemony" but at the same time they will spout whatever is popular at the time when it suits them regardless of any hypocrisy. Nobody is going to "hold them to task" for that. They would put pressure on Trump to explain why he hasn't pulled out more troops, for example. We sat here and watched them do so during the election. They aren't afraid to take on an "anti war" stance when it suits them.

But if they turned a blind eye to what's happening just because in principal they agree with the vague notion that withdrawing is good, that would neither help them sell papers nor would it be particularly good journalism. People are dumb but they aren't so dumb that they can't see what's happening and realize there's something ****ed here.

You don't need to be a master chef to know when a chef over cooks your steak. The chef can always rebuke you with the response "well you said you wanted steak. Now you complain when i give you steak." Which is technically true but doesn't change the fact that you burned my ****in steak bro.

TheBig3

I'm not mad it's a bad headline. I guess I just wish people thought more deeply about things they commented on. The American Public was just saying they wanted out, then the whiny ****s bitched they didn't like how we left.

As for the fall of the government, yeah I don't know what to say about that. It was much quicker than I expected. I was referring to the bombing.

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jwb

Yeah like whiny bitches they notice people falling from planes and tik tokers getting executed by the Taliban and they're like ****... That's ****ed.

You are absolutely mad that the reaction is not what you wished it was. It's clear as day from the way you phrased that. Stop getting mad at people for having the wrong takes and start putting pressure on the people you are trusting to lead us to get their **** together brody. And stop making excuses for Biden's mediocrity just cause the alternative was worse.

TheBig3

I think your takes are being colored by your politics. I'll say again, if this withdrawal was 3 times worse, I'd still be fine with it. The withdrawal is worth the price of ending America's longest war.

I also don't know where you see Biden's mediocrity. By the end result of any realpolitik he's way ahead of everyone else. You can't say that on the internet because extreme takes with zero policy details is the soup of the day, but I'm very surprised at how well Biden is doing.

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