The withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan

[Ernie]

This is a thread to discuss the withdrawal, and only that.
Other matters related to the war, the capability of the Afghan government, and whether you think the US should continue the war, should be discussed elsewhere. If there are things you don't like about Trump or Biden as well as Republicans or Democrats, please discuss those matters elsewhere as well.

Please stick to this very narrow topic. Thank you.

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As I understand it, Former Pres. Trump planned to withdraw troops by May of 2021. Biden extended that to August 2021 in order to give Afghan forces more time to get their act together. Now Biden and his administration are getting the blame for the current chaos. Is there more to the story that I am not understanding?

[Ken]

From a Christian and humanitarian perspective, I think what this 20-year war shows that if you want to help women and children and promote civil society then focus your aid and efforts on supporting groups and initiatives that do that.

If you want to increase misery and eventual humanitarian disaster, give money and guns to men.

What I do think is that if a stable civil society is ever going to come to Afghanistan then it is going to have to come through Islam. According to Wikipedia, Afghanistan is 99.7% Muslim. All the other religions (Christian, Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, Zoroastrian) make up no more than 0.3% of the population. The notion that western nations were ever going to impose any kind of western secular civil society on Afghanistan was pure hubris. To the extent that Taliban revolutionaries settle into some sort of civil society is going to depend more on the influence of other Islamic societies, not ours.

[Soloist]

This is a thread to discuss the withdrawal, and only that.
Other matters related to the war, the capability of the Afghan government, and whether you think the US should continue the war, should be discussed elsewhere. If there are things you don't like about Trump or Biden as well as Republicans or Democrats, please discuss those matters elsewhere as well.

Please stick to this very narrow topic. Thank you.

-----------------------------

As I understand it, Former Pres. Trump planned to withdraw troops by May of 2021. Biden extended that to August 2021 in order to give Afghan forces more time to get their act together. Now Biden and his administration are getting the blame for the current chaos. Is there more to the story that I am not understanding?

Its been established practice to kick the can down the road. This cannot be discussed or answered without the background behind it. Otherwise its just pontificating about issues that are irrelevant to the actual cause of the problems. You have scoped the question too narrow to have any educated response other then to say "yes" to the bolded.

[temporal1]

Ken,
If you want to increase misery and eventual humanitarian disaster, give money and guns to men.

if i understand Honduras Keiser correctly, this is what becomes of humanitarian aid in Honduras, and his first-person suggestion is to end it.

[Ernie]

This is a thread to discuss the withdrawal, and only that.
Other matters related to the war, the capability of the Afghan government, and whether you think the US should continue the war, should be discussed elsewhere. If there are things you don't like about Trump or Biden as well as Republicans or Democrats, please discuss those matters elsewhere as well.

Please stick to this very narrow topic. Thank you.

-----------------------------

As I understand it, Former Pres. Trump planned to withdraw troops by May of 2021. Biden extended that to August 2021 in order to give Afghan forces more time to get their act together. Now Biden and his administration are getting the blame for the current chaos. Is there more to the story that I am not understanding?

Its been established practice to kick the can down the road. This cannot be discussed or answered without the background behind it. Otherwise its just pontificating about issues that are irrelevant to the actual cause of the problems. You have scoped the question too narrow to have any educated response other then to say "yes" to the bolded.

I'm wondering what a Trump administration would have done in May, had they still been in power, and would it look a lot different than what we see happening right now under Biden?

[Ken]

This is a thread to discuss the withdrawal, and only that.
Other matters related to the war, the capability of the Afghan government, and whether you think the US should continue the war, should be discussed elsewhere. If there are things you don't like about Trump or Biden as well as Republicans or Democrats, please discuss those matters elsewhere as well.

Please stick to this very narrow topic. Thank you.

-----------------------------

As I understand it, Former Pres. Trump planned to withdraw troops by May of 2021. Biden extended that to August 2021 in order to give Afghan forces more time to get their act together. Now Biden and his administration are getting the blame for the current chaos. Is there more to the story that I am not understanding?

Its been established practice to kick the can down the road. This cannot be discussed or answered without the background behind it. Otherwise its just pontificating about issues that are irrelevant to the actual cause of the problems. You have scoped the question too narrow to have any educated response other then to say "yes" to the bolded.

I'm wondering what a Trump administration would have done in May, had they still been in power, and would it look a lot different than what we see happening right now under Biden?

Probably not much different. Whatever you think of Trump, he definitely didn't follow the Bush/Cheney Neocon doctrine of maintaining US troops everywhere in the globe as an expression of US power. His withdrawal from northern Syria against the advice of all the Neocon foreign policy establishment is an example. I haven't seen much retrospective analysis of that decision lately. I know that Turkey mostly filled the power vacuum. Besides that I don't really know. It seems to have been forgotten and vanished down the memory hole.

[temporal1]

This is a thread to discuss the withdrawal, and only that.
Other matters related to the war, the capability of the Afghan government, and whether you think the US should continue the war, should be discussed elsewhere. If there are things you don't like about Trump or Biden as well as Republicans or Democrats, please discuss those matters elsewhere as well.

Please stick to this very narrow topic. Thank you.

-----------------------------

As I understand it, Former Pres. Trump planned to withdraw troops by May of 2021. Biden extended that to August 2021 in order to give Afghan forces more time to get their act together. Now Biden and his administration are getting the blame for the current chaos. Is there more to the story that I am not understanding?

Its been established practice to kick the can down the road. This cannot be discussed or answered without the background behind it. Otherwise its just pontificating about issues that are irrelevant to the actual cause of the problems. You have scoped the question too narrow to have any educated response other then to say "yes" to the bolded.

I'm wondering what a Trump administration would have done in May, had they still been in power, and would it look a lot different than what we see happening right now under Biden?

It’s impossible to know.
However, DJT was able to avert violence in unexpected ways. Predictions were the polar opposite. We now have the benefit of knowing the predictions about DJT as POTUS were WRONG. i’m glad to say. i expected N Korea to bomb the U.S. west coast.

This is not a test of Biden, per se, but recognition of return to CAREER politicians’ policies, in the U.S., and in world wide “developed” countries. Policies that relabel sins+crimes for outward appearances/statistics; they fix nothing, while strutting about claiming they have prevailed. If they can’t deny defeat, the blame goes elsewhere.

May 8, 2018, Robert spoke to this:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1259

Trump has raised military spending, but seems to be working towards a smaller footprint in the world.

Peace through strength can easily be seen through his policies.

One thing that seems to be bringing the North Koreans to the table is what was about to be deployed to South Korea and the military sales he is making available to the Pacific countries. China was forced to force NK to negotiate since they do not want all that military might on their coast.

What few seem to know is that Trump was planning on deploying nuclear weapons to South Korea and/or Japan. This the Chinese could not accept and have now demanded NK denuclearize.

Seems his desire to have a massive military, yet disdain for nation building may actually bring more peace than all the back handed messing with other governments. Woodrow Wilson force the US out of it's isolationist policies. I see us moving in that general direction. I think this will bring more peace than what has been going on since WW1.

So, spending is up, but involvement is going down. he wants to shut down a lot of US bases in other countries.
He has shown that we do not need boots on the ground to deal with rogue countries that use WMD.
He destroys their abilities while avoiding lost of life. Interesting strategy. I suspect this will be 21st century war now.

[GaryK]

This interview of Secretary Blinken by Jake tapper may explain why President Biden is getting the blame for how the withdrawal of troops happened and where things stand today.

[Bootstrap]

As I understand it, Former Pres. Trump planned to withdraw troops by May of 2021. Biden extended that to August 2021 in order to give Afghan forces more time to get their act together. Now Biden and his administration are getting the blame for the current chaos. Is there more to the story that I am not understanding?

The current president always gets the blame. I think it's that simple. There's never a good way to prove whether earlier presidents would have done better or not.

In the war, we never had clear military goals and strategies, and they changed almost every year. The withdrawal looks a lot like the war, without clear objectives or goals or strategies. But it's hard for me to imagine what those objectives, goals, and strategies should be. It's easier to find good ways to end a war you are winning, it's very hard to find good ways to end a war you lost.

Any president is dependent on what the military tells him. My guess is that any president would have gotten similar advice and probably would have taken similar action. The same military that misjudged many other things during the war also misjudged a lot of how quickly the Afghan government would collapse during a withdrawal.

[temporal1]

This interview of Secretary Blinken by Jake tapper may explain why President Biden is getting the blame for how the withdrawal of troops happened and where things stand today.
https://twitter.com/CNNSotu/status/

This does not answer Ernie’s question about, would leadership have made a difference?
It’s impossible to know, but (i think) it could have. Based on DJT’s unexpected military outcomes.

Different people have different abilities+gifts. This is reflected in the smallest of circumstances to the greatest.
Shrugging off responsibility with loose generalizations/presumptions isn’t helpful.

If it was “going to happen anyway,” why the urgency to unseat a sitting president? If one is no different than another.
On this forum, some believe that. 2 sides of the same coin.

Frankly, i’ve often believed it, mostly crediting the U.S. system of checks+balances for it.

Now that it’s clear that career politicians have crafted such a tidy control tower for themselves, i put blame on incompetence+corruption. Not of one person or one party, but of THE ONE PARTY of career politicians, that claims to be two. For optics.

Sec of State appointed by biden.