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Thoughts of an Afghan vet
Comments
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It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
As cognitively impaired as Biden is, I genuinely thought he was at least surrounding himself with mildly competent advisors and cabinet picks who could navigate these decisions for him. But this latest episode tells me they're either completely incompetent themselves, or have nefarious intentions of their own. Not sure which of those shitty outcomes is worse.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
They don't appear to have picked any plan other than just leaving. Why leave Bagram in July, when obviously right now it sure would be nice to have a secure airfield? Why weren't we much further along in our plans to get our people out? Our entire leadership class, including Biden, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs and the CIA brass should be forced to resign. This was always going to end badly but there was no reason for it to end this way other than complete incompetence and indifference.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
I'm glad you're coming to this conclusion but how couldn't you see this coming for the past 4.5 years? These same people (mostly Bush and Obama loyalists) lied non stop and tried to set Trump up 24/7/365. The media ran cover for them all.GreenRiverGatorz said:
As cognitively impaired as Biden is, I genuinely thought he was at least surrounding himself with mildly competent advisors and cabinet picks who could navigate these decisions for him. But this latest episode tells me they're either completely incompetent themselves, or have nefarious intentions of their own. Not sure which of those shitty outcomes is worse.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
Speaking of cognitively impaired. How phucking oblivious do you have to be not to realize that there are no competent dem advisors. Have you listened to the Joint Chief of Staff and the US Secretary of State? They aren't leaders of men and women, they are leftard bureaucrats and more interested in open borders, global warming and LGBTQ issues. Projecting American power and promoting American interests aren't in the top issues in the Biden administration. These are the same advisors who were predicting World War III when Trump offed Soleimani. Just think that pre-dementia Biden advised AGAINST offing OBL. That's the type of competency that has surrounded the head incompetent. But you voted for the dementia patient that is bought and paid for by the chicoms.GreenRiverGatorz said:
As cognitively impaired as Biden is, I genuinely thought he was at least surrounding himself with mildly competent advisors and cabinet picks who could navigate these decisions for him. But this latest episode tells me they're either completely incompetent themselves, or have nefarious intentions of their own. Not sure which of those shitty outcomes is worse.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
Yeah all CRT jokes and malarkey aside, I am genuinely concerned with what type of leadership we have in this country that could let this happen. I mean even if Biden does the dumbest shit possible and says "withdraw in a week" surely someone should have been saying "okay, keep the Marines on perimeter at the airfield, approve all visas in progress for Afghan nationals in the 'friends of America' queue, take them to Fort Bliss and we will sort it out later, continue an orderly evacuation around the clock under Marine guard with Air Force heavies going morning noon and night. Have Embassy staff destroying all sensitive documents and destroying what's left while the 82nd Airborne goes after our old weapons depots and destroys them (or drone strike it all)...." I mean whatever, that was just a stream of consciousness rough draft and I hit most of the high points.GreenRiverGatorz said:
As cognitively impaired as Biden is, I genuinely thought he was at least surrounding himself with mildly competent advisors and cabinet picks who could navigate these decisions for him. But this latest episode tells me they're either completely incompetent themselves, or have nefarious intentions of their own. Not sure which of those shitty outcomes is worse.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again?
But almost none of that happened. It's like we just said "Hey time to go, turn off the lights behind you and hopefully this shit all works out." Mind boggling. -
I was never under any illusions about who is in the press and how anti-Trump the entire establishment is. None of this does anything to change my opinion about how utterly disastrous and incompetent the last admin was, albeit in completely different ways. You probably don't see it that way, and that's fine, we don't have to agree. Trump isn't POTUS, Biden is. And therefore he rightly gets all the blame for every fuck-up under his watch.RoadTrip said:
I'm glad you're coming to this conclusion but how couldn't you see this coming for the past 4.5 years? These same people (mostly Bush and Obama loyalists) lied non stop and tried to set Trump up 24/7/365. The media ran cover for them all.GreenRiverGatorz said:
As cognitively impaired as Biden is, I genuinely thought he was at least surrounding himself with mildly competent advisors and cabinet picks who could navigate these decisions for him. But this latest episode tells me they're either completely incompetent themselves, or have nefarious intentions of their own. Not sure which of those shitty outcomes is worse.Swaye said:
It's a mess. To be sure. And there are no easy answers here. My frustration lies with the fact that there were probably about 10 different ways to play this (and they ALL would have been presented to the President), with most of them ending poorly to be fair, but the Biden Admin picked THE WORST possible selection of all 10. Just stunning levels of ineptitude.GreenRiverGatorz said:
This is where I'm torn. The isolated costs of just maintaining Afghanistan as it was are objectively small. But staying would just continue to set the precedent that we can march in wherever we want and uphold an unstable nation with just a few thousand soldiers. Easy to enter, impossible to leave. That's a war hawk's wet dream and ignores all of the damage we did by being there in the first place and all of the future terrorists we created with every missed drone strike that landed on a child's head.Swaye said:Only place I disagree with him is the assessment that we should have stayed forever. Disagree strongly. But, other than that he nails it. We could have continued to slowly turn over the reigns and at least given them a chance to hold onto their country. Reality is Afghanistan is probably eventually lost no matter what we did. Pakistan, shitheads that they are, do support the Taliban materially. Without support the Afghans were fucked, but we could have at least resettled those who helped us. This entire debacle is just fucked.
The conspiratorial part of me thinks that there were a lot of hawkish players within the military and intelligence community who orchestrated this mess to boost future propaganda of "look what happens when leave". They knew how disastrous such a quick exit would be, and with Biden painting himself as a "no more wars" kind of president, they saw a useful idiot who could be manipulated into signing off on this hasty mess.
I do still have some contacts that are pretty well placed in the Pentagon and I am reasonably certain it was not orchestrated there (the highest levels of the Pentagon are horrified at how this is unfolding I am told via text just this morning). I cannot speak to the IC or State. Possible some malarkey is going on there. I think it much more likely that the Admin was presented with about 10 different plans, all of them not grerat, but they plowed forward and picked the absolute worst.
What a shitshow. The fallout from this will reverberate for ages. The US abandons it's Allies to certain death. Great tagline. I thought Biden was supposed to make the world trust us again? -
You could give us a few examples. But you don't. How was Trump worse the barry? Domestic policy? Foreign policy? Don't hurt yourself.
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Yeah, I'd be interested in a few examples as well. What has Biden handled more competently than Trump?WestlinnDuck said:You could give us a few examples. But you don't. How was Trump worse the barry? Domestic policy? Foreign policy? Don't hurt yourself.
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Mean tweets were utterly disastrous and incompetent. Trump should just have let the dems and the MSM lie about him. Making them feel bad was a deal breaker for high character dudes like GRG and Snow.SFGbob said:
Yeah, I'd be interested in a few examples as well. What has Biden handled more competently than Trump?WestlinnDuck said:You could give us a few examples. But you don't. How was Trump worse the barry? Domestic policy? Foreign policy? Don't hurt yourself.
