What Didn’t President Biden Do Now?

Mucha na Dziko · 08-29-2021, 07:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

The last twenty years were a failure. Getting out just made obvious it was all a grift. To think pulling out is a failure you either have to be a neolib who dreams of imperialism disguised as nation building or a neocon who jerks off to imperialist resource extraction.

It's not about imperialism.
The decision of getting the troops out of there might be good for the US (as in "our boys are coming back home"), but certainly not for Afghanistan, as it's gonna be (and kinda already is) WW3 down there. Again.

**Frownland** · 08-29-2021, 07:33 PM

Yes let's go back the peaceful times of foreign occupation where hundreds of thousands of citizens were murdered.

jadis · 08-29-2021, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mucha na Dziko

It's not about imperialism.

lmao i love the confidence of this sweeping statement. the occupation that served as a pretext to funnel literal trillions in taxpayer dollars to defense contractors? yeah, no imperialism involved!

The Batlord · 08-30-2021, 03:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WWWP

he could have not pulled out all the elite troops and left everyone else behind to fend for themselves until the kids showed up to absorb the impact

I can agree that wishful thinking led to insufficient people on the ground to manage the airport, which is why 3000 troops are apparently on their way to (hopefully temporarily) secure it, but greater security in the airport probably would not make a meaningful difference in the collapse of everywhere else.

Mucha na Dziko · 08-30-2021, 07:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jadis

lmao i love the confidence of this sweeping statement. the occupation that served as a pretext to funnel literal trillions in taxpayer dollars to defense contractors? yeah, no imperialism involved!

What I meant is that the criticism of this decision is based on the fact that it destabilises the country/region and leads to more deaths and human suffering than there'd be if the US stayed stationed there

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland

Yes let's go back the peaceful times of foreign occupation where hundreds of thousands of citizens were murdered.

Many more thousands of citizens will get (and already are) murdered because of the decision to not be stationed there anymore

There would certainly be a better way of solving this dilemma than leaving Afghanistan in the hands of the Talibans.

**Frownland** · 08-30-2021, 07:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mucha na Dziko

Many more thousands of citizens will get (and already are) murdered because of the decision to not be stationed there anymore

There would certainly be a better way of solving this dilemma than leaving Afghanistan in the hands of the Talibans.

I doubt that the first claim is true, especially since most locals are pretty on board with the transition. Even still, continuing to kill citizens sounds like a terrible way to save their lives. Plus, a local force is much easier for locals to reckon with than an invading force with trillions of dollars in funding sending an endless supply of soldiers at them.

The Batlord · 08-30-2021, 09:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mucha na Dziko

What I meant is that the criticism of this decision is based on the fact that it destabilises the country/region and leads to more deaths and human suffering than there'd be if the US stayed stationed there

Thousands are already dying in Afghanistan every year. You just don't hear about it cause they're not American. So long as we're there the Taliban will continue to gain recruits and the war will never end. Leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban is repugnant but at least there's a chance they sort their own **** out. Will never happen so long as we stay and defense contractors continue to get trillions for the murder machine.

WWWP · 08-30-2021, 10:12 AM

There’s no **** to sort out, it’s “this is what’s gonna happen.”

~~jwb~~ · 08-30-2021, 11:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland

The media is full of warhawks because war is an excellent content farm that they don't want to lose.

jwb's right that Biden's poll numbers are dropping in response to this, I just think that its relevancy is outweighed by the positive of ending what's universally recognized as a pointless war. The fact that the pull out went to **** so quickly is just an affirmation of how useless prolonging it was.

If you want to talk horse races, I feel like this was a pretty good move to court the progressives in his party that oppose him.

actually i would say that's more of an indication of how rapidly and haphazardly the pull out was executed. Nobody was expecting the country to fall as quickly as it did or for the evacuation to be as chaotic as it was.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

No you're just saying it could have been done better and using Biden's negative media portrayal as proof. How do you micromanage the sustainability of a country when it's own president abandons it the week of pulling out? What options were there to actually do anything short of sending a new invasion force?

It's not even about micromanaging the long term stability... I would tend to agree that as long as you pull out the resurge of Taliban rule was likely if not inevitable but it wasn't necessarily as inevitable for it to go down quite as disasterous as it did.

Like sure it was probably inevitable that Katrina was going to be a disaster too but the way the govt handled it also exasperated that situation and as such was a stain on the administration responsible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Thousands are already dying in Afghanistan every year. You just don't hear about it cause they're not American. So long as we're there the Taliban will continue to gain recruits and the war will never end. Leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban is repugnant but at least there's a chance they sort their own **** out. Will never happen so long as we stay and defense contractors continue to get trillions for the murder machine.

do you honestly think Afghanistan has a chance in hell at being better off than it was during the occupation?

As unwinnable as that war was, its hard for me to think that the country isn't by and large going to be worse off in the long run under Taliban rule. It just won't be as much of our problem anymore but that country was a theocratic hell hole ruled by religious war lords pre 9/11 and that's exactly what's coming back. Make no doubt about it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

I can agree that wishful thinking led to insufficient people on the ground to manage the airport, which is why 3000 troops are apparently on their way to (hopefully temporarily) secure it, but greater security in the airport probably would not make a meaningful difference in the collapse of everywhere else.

could've saved some soldiers and civilians lives. Could've had a better plan for evacuating refugees. We are basically abandoning a **** load of innocent people who were better off under the occupation than they will be under the Taliban. People aren't hanging off planes for no reason. They know damn well they will be executed.

**Frownland** · 08-30-2021, 11:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwb

actually i would say that's more of an indication of how rapidly and haphazardly the pull out was executed. Nobody was expecting the country to fall as quickly as it did or for the evacuation to be as chaotic as it was.

That's why the Afghan president left town before it all went down, right? Because nobody was expecting anything to happen so quickly?

08-29-2021, 07:33 PM	#152 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,541	Yes let's go back the peaceful times of foreign occupation where hundreds of thousands of citizens were murdered. __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x