It's kind of pathetic for someone that was so outspoken against DJT you have to resort to humor as a way to make it seem like you never really cared.
Biden is being very nice to the taliban. Hopefully this helps in bringing our citizens and allies home. The former pres wouldve handled this very differently.
The path was secure until Kabul fall. With hindsight, we would know the Afghan military put up zero resistance and we would get the hell out of there as fast as possible. We would speed up the special visa application and get them all out, all of our allies out, and all of our military out. But of course, that's with hindsight. Without hindsight, if we are to be careful, you would protect Kabul with increased military personnel until we all leave, but as I said, that was the last thing Americans wanted at that time.
Some samples of refugee rejections even under these circumstances. It's very reasonable to think anti-refugee people having these fears - the speed and scope of taking these people in at this rate mean likely they aren't fully vetted (a process that typically takes months).
the only difference i see is that trump made a deal with the taliban to pull out troops in april instead of august. the former president brokered a peace deal with the taliban while excluding the afghan government, thus totally undermining their power and crediblity. he invited them to camp david on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11. he made the deal to get u.s. troops out of afghanistan. he brokered the deal for a prisoner swap where 5,000 taliban fighters were traded for 1,000 afghan security forces. he made the deal with the taliban to lift sanctions. "I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show we're not all wasting time" - donald trump in feb 2020. biden is not handling this correctly and the withdrawal has been totally f***ed up. his press conference yesterday was pathetic...but i dont want to hear any trump cultists criticizing what is happening right now. your god trump bears responsibility for this s***show too.
Predictable and typical. Fein concern for people left behind, and then treat them with scorn at the possibility they may be given refuge here.
Have you not followed along on anything with the Taliban during the Trump administration? Please tell me again how Trump acts towards foreign leaders who say stuff like this about Trump? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taliban-on-trump-we-hope-he-will-win-the-election-withdraw-us-troops/ Yes... Trump would have handled this differently. He would have done an impromptu gaggle with reporters by Marine 1 where he would say "everything is going great. Nobody in our country even thought it would be possible to doing this great. It's just great. We are doing some great things in this country, but if you look at Hunter Biden's emails, there's some real bad stuff in there. Someone should look at that, and the server, you know the server they say they used bleach, and then they did the illegal wiretap...." To me it was actually nice to hear Biden actually talk through some of the items yesterday, and expand on a few things. It wasn't all fluffy Trump talk. He actually took ownership and said the Buck Stops with Me and owned the decision for better or worse. I know everyone on both sides thinks there are screw ups here, but anyone make a case that Trump would have handled THIS better especially given his track record in setting up this specific agreement with the Taliban is pretty foolish.
I agree with that. But if you remember that time, he had pretty strong domestic support for war in Afghanistan after 9/11. I didn't want it, but it seemed like most of America wanted blood. I still blame GWB for leading us down this road, but we Americans abetted him. Another president I'm particularly disappointed in here is Obama. When he campaigned, he opposed the Iraq War but he supported the Afghan occupation. He could have pulled out but instead he added 8 years to it. With hindsight, we can see they didn't build anything worth a damn, so that was 8 years of Afghan suffering for nothing. This pullout has been awful, but so has been the way we went in and the way we stayed in. It was a bad war and a blemish on all 4 presidents associated with it. I guess I didn't need to say it because it was obvious, but I understand the call-out. The orchestration of our retreat looks like a disaster and it's Biden's fault it's happening. Many people will die because of this failure. Still don't regret throwing in with Biden. Trump still has more blood on his hands, and fortunately we can only imagine what a Trump-led pullout would look like.
We were lied to on multiple fronts though. The media played a big part as well. 9/11 was a crime. It was not an act of war by the country of Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi multi millionaire who just had some training camps hidden in the back country of Afghanistan. The mastermind of 9/11 planned the event actually in Venice FLORIDA. The event wasn't even planned in Afghanistan. Had the country been given proper facts and context, I think the war in Afghanistan would have had much different public support. Had Bush communicated to Americans the way Biden did yesterday leveling things in a more direct fashion this would have been much much different. Yes I realize that Americans wanted to kick ass but I still think W is the culprit here mostly even though you could go even back further with Afghanistan and remember Charlie Wilson's War. But yeah... Yesterday's uproar should have been aimed at W. Every segment on the news should have at least mentioned him in context of what was going on. And yes, Obama made a very very naïve mistake in thinking that maybe if he just did a surge to stabilize then maybe finally the country would be a better place to pull out of. He was very very wrong. However if Obama had pulled out when he originally wanted to, the country was in such a critical state that the visuals of the horrors that would have followed would have sank Obama's re-election. What's happening now on Biden's watch is nothing compared to what it would have been like back then.
I appreciate your candid response. I don't think it's fair to assume Trump would have bungled the withdrawal the same way Biden just did, all you can do is surmise. In Trump's 4 years, he never did anything like this, so he deserves at least some benefit of the doubt. Regarding blood on Trump's hands, I assume you are talking about Covid deaths. While I would put more blame on China than the U.S. President having to deal with an unprecedented, and new, pandemic, if someone put responsibility on DJT I would listen to what they had to say. I will say this though, for a large chunk of 2020, DJT was out on the front lawn of the White House at 3pm everyday, giving a briefing on the daily efforts to tackle Covid, making himself available to the press and taking questions (tough ones, not from hand picked patsies), and taking it on the chin day after day. To me that's a better sign of leadership than Biden's scurrying back to Camp David after yesterday's canned speech.
Don't disagree. I think public sentiment leaned toward doing bad things, but we do pick our leaders to lead, and hopefully wisely. He led unwisely, and we unwisely followed. The hell he didn't. Remember when he abandoned our allies in Syria so they got sandwiched between a Turkish offensive against the Kurds and Assad's ongoing assault on Syrian rebels? It wasn't a bungling though; he did it on purpose. I don't know if he would have done a better or worse job with this part of the withdrawal than Biden has done. But it also doesn't look like he's done much to lay the groundwork for it aside from declaring our departure. Given the work he hadn't done, I don't think it's a stretch to be pessimistic. One good thing I might say about Trump is when he first started some withdrawal action and the Taliban increased their military pressure, he halted and reasserted our military control. He probably spared himself a big collapse like Biden just oversaw. But, that would have been the moment to start getting much more comprehensive about an orderly retreat instead of just leaving it for the next Administration. Biden could have done this too, which might mean another year or two in the theatre in order to save lives (though, honestly, legislative action might have been necessary to save our Afghan collaborators and politics likely would have sunk it).
Please provide evidence of stunning execution Trump has delivered on anything in his 70+ years on earth other than entertainment via Bullsh&t. What evidence do you have that Trump would have avoided the scene of people in Afghanistan trying to leave the country desperately while the Taliban took over? Under Trump would Afghanis suddenly change their mind that Afghanistan would be a beacon of hope now just because the Golden god is in the WhiteHouse halfway around the world?? I really have no idea why you guys think this is an argument you have any credibility making. It’s just mind boggling and really just speaks to the utter desperation for anything … I mean anything you think you can credibly criticize Biden for. Anyone making the case that Donald J Trump… the guy who oversaw over 400,000 avoidable deaths and suggested injecting disinfectant… would have handled ANYTHING better from an execution standpoint is a laughing stock. It’s utterly ridiculous. Trump is incredibly incompetent. You can argue his principles if you want, but in this case Trump and Biden were aligned and Trump bragged that’s he wanted to get out even more swift… publicly. Just insane, and you should stop.
