What Didn’t President Biden Do Now?

The Batlord · 08-30-2021, 03:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwb

Dunno about the president but from what i heard, which admittedly isn't much cause i don't have that much free time to research this ****, is that the intelligence projections expected the conflict to drag on a couple months at least. Every source I've seen has remarked on how quickly everything fell compared to what they were anticipating. Maybe the president was wise enough to foresee how botched this whole thing would be. Either way you can't tell me it's impossible to pull out from a country without doing it all at once so the whole place goes to **** in a matter of weeks. I can't see how you could think that level of chaos is not something we would want to mitigate.

Alright, the generals in Afghanistan? Pre-existing warlords we gave uniforms and cash. Then they inflated their recruit numbers to get more cash out of cause we pay their troops for them. Then they took the money we'd give them for their actual soldiers and send it to Dubai. Then their soldiers who never gor paid would sell whatever they had (guns, ammo, fuel, shoes) to the Taliban so they could eat. Then they'd probably desert, the warlords would recruit more "soldiers", rinse repeat gor 20 years.

The Afghan army mostly existed on paper.

As far as I know the officials were just whatever tribal leaders we thought would be the best colonial figureheads and their power never went much further than the buildings housing their offices since they didn't actually have any functional control over the warlords. Mostly they just used their positions to do much the same as the warlords, grifting money and sending it to Dubai.

The Afghan government also mostly existed on paper.

This happened differently than in Iraq because despite everything that happened between the two Gulf Wars and the sanctions in the 90s it was still some semblance of a functional country, whereas Afghanistan has been one big crater since the 70s.

~~jwb~~ · 08-31-2021, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Alright, the generals in Afghanistan? Pre-existing warlords we gave uniforms and cash. Then they inflated their recruit numbers to get more cash out of cause we pay their troops for them. Then they took the money we'd give them for their actual soldiers and send it to Dubai. Then their soldiers who never gor paid would sell whatever they had (guns, ammo, fuel, shoes) to the Taliban so they could eat. Then they'd probably desert, the warlords would recruit more "soldiers", rinse repeat gor 20 years.

The Afghan army mostly existed on paper.

As far as I know the officials were just whatever tribal leaders we thought would be the best colonial figureheads and their power never went much further than the buildings housing their offices since they didn't actually have any functional control over the warlords. Mostly they just used their positions to do much the same as the warlords, grifting money and sending it to Dubai.

The Afghan government also mostly existed on paper.

This happened differently than in Iraq because despite everything that happened between the two Gulf Wars and the sanctions in the 90s it was still some semblance of a functional country, whereas Afghanistan has been one big crater since the 70s.

the problem seems to be that Biden and his admin and advisers and all the intelligence they were working on were not at all prepared for that reality. Their pull out strategy assumed they had like 6 months to work with instead of 11 days. And that assumption didn't work out too well for them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jadis

It never went away.

While it may only get even worse for ordinary Afghans in the coming years, there is something to be said for the alternative to the Taliban no longer being violent foreign invaders who don't even pretend to have any coherent long-term plan for the country. Say what you will about the Iraq war, but in addition to all the profiteering, it was also driven by sincerely-held delusions about "nation-building". With Afghanistan the pretense was never even there.

If only someone knew what was behind the change. Maybe Zbigniew Brzezinski could have an idea?

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/...ordering-pizza

Wasnt the pretense that they were going to let the UN handle the nation building aspect or something like that initially?

I do believe there was a pretense that the point of invading the country was not only to get Al Qaeda but to remove the Taliban from power because they were the ones giving refuge to Al Qaeda in the first place.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland

This but unironically

i suppose when you are executed by the de facto state under shariah law that doesn't count as murder

The Batlord · 08-31-2021, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwb

the problem seems to be that Biden and his admin and advisers and all the intelligence they were working on were not at all prepared for that reality. Their pull out strategy assumed they had like 6 months to work with instead of 11 days. And that assumption didn't work out too well for them.

I honestly don't know what they were expecting tbh, though I'm sure they must have had an idea of the situation. I mean that first press conference where he's saying he doesn't think Afghanistan would fall he did not sound confident or like he wanted to be there making any kind of statement he could could be held to account for. I doubt in a million years he ever would have admitted that we had completely failed and it was about to be a **** show.

SGR · 08-31-2021, 03:02 PM

One would imagine that if they thought it would have been as much of an optical disaster as it has become, that they would've delayed the withdrawal further to a time in which they were more prepared. That all of course assumes that the people on the ground were feeding accurate information back to the administration and being generally competent. Part of me thinks that people in the administration really wanted this to happen in time for the "20th anniversary of 9/11". If it did not become as much of a cluster**** as it has, and no American died, it could've been a rather easy optical success for Biden. Right now, he's looking more like Gerald Ford (Vietnam/Saigon) than Eisenhower (Korean War).

The Batlord · 08-31-2021, 06:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SoundgardenRocks

One would imagine that if they thought it would have been as much of an optical disaster as it has become, that they would've delayed the withdrawal further to a time in which they were more prepared. That all of course assumes that the people on the ground were feeding accurate information back to the administration and being generally competent. Part of me thinks that people in the administration really wanted this to happen in time for the "20th anniversary of 9/11". If it did not become as much of a cluster**** as it has, and no American died, it could've been a rather easy optical success for Biden. Right now, he's looking more like Gerald Ford (Vietnam/Saigon) than Eisenhower (Korean War).

So after 20 years of incompetence the competence was supposed to start now? Focusing on the withdrawal honestly feels like copium so people don't have to deal with the sheer weight of a 20 year abject failure that indicts the entire country. No, it's just this one guy's failure in this particular moment so let's focus on that and not think about how much America sucks.

08-31-2021, 03:02 PM	#4 (permalink)
SGR No Ice In My Bourbon Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: /dev/null Posts: 4,327	One would imagine that if they thought it would have been as much of an optical disaster as it has become, that they would've delayed the withdrawal further to a time in which they were more prepared. That all of course assumes that the people on the ground were feeding accurate information back to the administration and being generally competent. Part of me thinks that people in the administration really wanted this to happen in time for the "20th anniversary of 9/11". If it did not become as much of a cluster**** as it has, and no American died, it could've been a rather easy optical success for Biden. Right now, he's looking more like Gerald Ford (Vietnam/Saigon) than Eisenhower (Korean War).