They have right to their opinions and feeling. They are genuine. I can never imagine what they are going thru and no words can comfort me, if in that situation But, what is the point of a fake ?? How does anything else justify a fake. It actually is disrespectful to the real mourners.
LOL - it's true, they are ignorant, follow an ancient mythology, by and large uneducated, and think that God should be in charge.....they bomb abortion clinics, they don't wear masks which hurt others, they think that the after life will be better. It literally lines up. DD
There is and I wish we get to know all of that. The extreme noise from doctored and faked messages is a complete distraction and making it even more difficult
I believe there are limits to what our intelligence agancies can do in this part of the world. It's just the nature of the beast. I'd be willing to bet that they are heavily dependent on Pakistan - specifically ISI - and it's common knowledge that they have been playing both sides of the street for the past 20 years. At any rate, once the ANA forces folded without a fight there was NO way that our withdrawal was going to be smooth and uneventful. Anyone who witnessed the chaotic panic of the desperate crowds rushing the airport to escape the Taliban could see just how easy it was for ISIS to infiltrate them with suicide bombers which is exactly what happened. We didn't learn from Vietnam. We didn't learn from Iran. We watched the Russians screw up in Afghanistan and then followed them into the same fool's adventure. The failure wasn't the way it ended in Afghanistan - it was going there in the first place.
newbs don't know who Vince Carter is. They only know kenny cause he's been on tv as long as they have been alive.
Embassy view of the evac. Read for insights. There is no graceful way to evac vulnerable people from a country at war. There are better ways & worse ways, but none look good from the outside (or inside). Things could have gone much better, but they also could have gone worse, and many challenges were inevitable. 2/17 The hardest part of evac'ing from a warzone is reaching the exit – airport in this case. USG didn’t control Kabul so it had few options to help and all put our people at risk. In South Sudan, we had some success moving a few people to the airport from inside Juba... 3/17 ...but opportunities were ltd. Even harder beyond the capital. We aborted an attempted evac from another town when our aircraft came under fire with serious injuries to US service members. Deciding when and how much to put our people at risk is hard. 4/17 Next, someone must decide who gets in. These are life and death decisions, made 100s-1000s of times a day. Mil and civ officers do so with vague guidelines from Washington. Who counts as a family member? How do you prove they are? 5/17 How do you prioritize among hundreds when no one’s documents are complete? Many don’t grab their passport and other docs when fleeing for their lives on short notice. 6/17 Answers are subjective. Doing it at volume is hard, making decisions among 1000s or more. USG could have taken steps earlier to reduce some numbers (see below), but none of that applied once evac began. It was always going to be a crush. Why? 7/17 Americans and our allies aren't the only ones trying to leave, and our departures aren't other people's priorities. 8/17 Most at the gates probably weren’t USG priorities (Americans, Afghan allies) but USG had no way to control/limit crowding without law enforcement authority. Expanding the perimeter would have just pushed the same problem out further. 9/17 If more Americans and allies had left sooner, we would have had fewer to evac. USG had control over one but not the other. 10/17 Not much USG could do to get more Americans out sooner b/c many chose not to go. USG has warned Americans for yrs not to travel to Afghanistan and specifically urged Americans to leave since 2020 deal was signed. Thousands stayed b/c they’re usually there for a reason. 11/17 For family, business, humanitarian or other conflict-related work. Some work in security. Most want to be on last safe flight out possible. All had good reasons, but you don't know when the last one will be, it won’t likely be safe, and only has so many seats. 12/17 I saw it in South Sudan, urging people to leave as soon as they had a chance, but many opted to delay, hoping things wouldn't get worse. But they did. 13/17 Where we could and should have done better is Afghan allies. But this required fixing a broken special immigrant visa (SIV) program years ago–not just starting evacs a few weeks earlier. #Trump admin intentionally clogged the system... 14/17 But it was already a 14-step process with unnecessary, difficult bureaucratic steps, particularly hard to complete from Afghanistan. Had Congress, Defense, and State fixed it years ago, 10,000s of our #AfghanAllies would be in the US already. 15/17 As many criticize the evac process, surely plagued by inefficiencies and interagency contradictions, remember the mil and civ on the ground charged with 1000s of these life and death decisions, in dangerous circumstances, doing the best they could with limited information. 16/17 They deserve immense gratitude but will live with the weight of these choices forever, and what their decisions meant for the ones they didn’t choose. I wish them peace of mind, to be proud of the work they did, know they did their best, and that their service saved lives. 17/17
I was talking a friend yesterday who is 25 about Afghanistan. She was only 4 when the first US Troops went there. Most of the incoming freshman class at US universities were born after the first US troops went there and there are people serving in the military after the first US troops went there. As critical as I am with how the withdrawal took place I fully agree we had to leave. Now that the last official US forces have left looking back I will say that overall this didn't end up as unmitigated disaster. We were able to get over 100,000 Americans, other foreigners and Afghans out and while the loss from the suicide bombing last Thursday was tragic this could've been much bloodier. I still stand by my criticism of Biden that this should've been planned better fully preparing for a rapid collapse of the Afghan government. Biden's rhetoric didn't help even as recently as last week promising to stay until every last American was out. That was a promise that was going to be very difficult to keep. The withdrawal from Afghanistan is now more of a matter for history.
There are two types of evangelical christians. One type actually mimics Jesus and his embracing of the poor, outcasts etc like migrants and so things like house refugees and are typically apolitical. The other type are hard edge right wing who use their religion as a ego trip to feel superior and advocate for a religious law based government.
I would think, and suspect you would agree, that that depends completely with what happens to those we didn't get out. Most especially the Americans, but the others as well. You also need to evaluate the impact of how this went in a broader context than just Afghanistan. How did (will) it impact our global standing? With our allies? With those who aren't our allies? You have to look domestically as well. I think most Americans lost a LOT of faith in government and military leadership over this. It sounds like many soldiers lost faith in their leadership. I guess long story short...it hasn't ended yet, and we can't really judge it until it has. And even then, it has far broader implications that should be taken into consideration. For the same reason, I took issue with everyone declaring the war over. The war isn't over when you have left people behind. We just left the battlefield, is all. It doesn't really end until those people come home.
