Biden/Harris: A Presidency for All Americans

[Omaha 680]

Poor Joe inherited a mess. When the music stopped, he was left without a seat. He could have turned things around if he wanted to, but that was likely a bridge too far for him.

For sure. But similar to JFK and the Bay of Pigs, Joe either needed to change course, or provide the proper protection for his allies the plan was putting in danger. Abandoning them is absolutely shameful, regardless of what has happened over the past 20 years. The buck stops with him even though his predecessor was one of our worst ever. It didn't clean the stain, but at least JFK admitted his error and met with the survivors and their families.

I hear that the republicans have removed support from withdrawing from Afghanistan from the party website. I recall during the campaign that they were arguing that we shouldn't vote for Biden because he might not carry out Trump's plan to pull out. Shameless.

I saw that. And it's just as gross as Biden officials playing Baghdad Bob on TV pretending that our former allies aren't falling to their deaths after clinging to our military transports that are abandoning them to torture and death.

[old_gregg]

not sure what the alternative is here. a skeleton crew of special ops guys and drones is not going to hold territory or make the afghani military an effective fighting force. they’ve had 20 years and a blank check. at the end of the day, you save american lives and do what you can for the cooperative afghani populace. it might be politically damning, but it’s the right moral and practical choice.

[old_gregg]

I hear that the republicans have removed support from withdrawing from Afghanistan from the party website. I recall during the campaign that they were arguing that we shouldn't vote for Biden because he might not carry out Trump's plan to pull out. Shameless.

in fact, i recall folks on this chat blog calling biden a warmonger.

[Commando]

We are a layer of acrylic paint away from one of that crazy LDS dude's paintings in the 'I'm not sure how to introduce this' thread...

[Clark Addison]

The whole Afghanistan thing is too depressing for so I haven't really been seeking out news on it, just seeing things as they flash by. Therefore, this observation may be completely off. In what I have seen, I have read a ton of criticism of Biden, which I don't have a problem with. I have seen some criticism of Trump as it was his plan. OK, that's fine. But I have seen almost nothing about Bush, who, as I am sure Walter (RIP) would like to remind us, got us into the whole mess. Once we got to 2008 and the end of the Bush presidency, there was really very little chance for this to end well. It has only been a matter of the magnitude of the awfulness. Luckily, it looks like we maximized that as much as possible.

[Commando]

The good thing about Biden as opposed to say a Trump is that when he's in deep shit like right now you know he's not going to double down and insist it's a great idea. I heard they are planning a massive evac effort and are going to shelter upwards of about 30k Afghani refugees at military installations around the country until they can get background checks done and then settled in American communites. I say that's a good start but obviously not good enough.

[Omaha 680]

Maybe. Obviously the lack of vaccination is driving the new numbers- not sure what messaging the CDC could have added to change that. Right wing media is gonna right wing media. At least President Nelson stepped up.

I'll take any further discussion to the COVID thread, but the problem is this: The Biden administration is acting like zero COVID is a reasonable goal and it is painfully obvious now that it is not. Every country across the world is getting hit by delta regardless of their strategy pre-vaccine or their vaccination rates. The messaging should be COVID is here to stay so please get vaccinated. If you are vaccinated you are safe, if you are not you are risking serious illness and death but regardless we are going back to normal.

[Uncle Ted]

The Biden fix is in... They won't enter the US Embassy in Kabul now since they banned the vaccine.

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[Northwestcoug]

Trump started this nonsense and has blood on his hands, definitely. Biden supercharged it. This is every bit as bad as Saigon, maybe worse. How we got there is largely irrelevant at this point; we owe those who collaborated with us protection and we are abandoning them to torture and death. We are throwing Afghan girls out of school and sentencing Afghan women to the abuse of the Taliban.

I am sympathetic to the "endless wars" complaints but if this could be prevented by a skeleton force of 3,000, funding to the Afghan army and the threat of US airstrikes if needed, it is worth avoiding this shitshow. We should all be ashamed of what we are doing.

Agree 100%. Afghanistan has proven itself to be a special kind of unsolvable hell. But the amount of blood and money we wasted on trying to solve it deserves more commitment and decency to mitigate as much as possible this disaster of a pullout.

Every administration shares in this mistake. Right now tensions are high with the realization of what the human cost of Taliban (I can't be the only one who thinks of that song in "BeatleJuice" every time I hear the word "Taliban" said...."tally me banana!") rule is and many wrapping themselves in the American flag of the cost to the many veterans who served there. So I offer my thoughts:

1.) I believe it was worth it to go in to root out Al Queada. Our mistake was attempting nation building. If the Afghani people want Taliban they can have Taliban. If Taliban allows terrorist groups who want to hurt the US to thrive then we occasionally show up to wreck the thriving and if there is collateral damage to Taliban- that is OK. Occasional raids, air strikes etc, that might require occupying areas over there for sometime, is what our military does and does it well. Our Veterans should take pride in doing their duty and accomplishing their military objectives. They need to ignore the chatter amongst their countrymen that is motivated by tribalism as politicos wrap themselves in the flag to elevate their team at the expense of the other.

2.) Every administration and the American people are to blame. We wanted to go in and too many of us wanted to rebuild Afghnastan. Hopefully we have learned and we can resist the tribalistic urge to blame such and such more for this 20 year event. There were both successes and failures with the fundamental failure of rebuilding Afghanistan overwhelming everything.

3.) Trump's plan was not a good one-that is no surprise as by the end of his administration fellows like him have lost the honest and the competent. The disaster of the past few weeks highlights my biggest concern with this event-the lack of honesty or competency. Either our DOD and Intel folks are dishonest or incompetent.

4.) The pullout is on President Biden. I understand he inherited a flawed plan but he had time to change it or ignore it but he pressed forward with a very inept withdrawal. My instinct is that his political opponents will make a hay day out of this with his poor predictions of how this would go being the hallmark in history of Joe Biden. Indeed for my woke friends Uncle Joe has just put himself forever in the purgatory hated most by the woke- "the wrong side of history." There should be an investigation to why the President of the United States was so very wrong. For years we had military on the ground and thousands of intelligence experts and diplomats on the job there and after 20 years that is the best we knew about Afghanastanian institutions- that bothers me far more than what happened on January 06. This type of ineptness from an administration is what destroys the legitimacy that for so long prevented very many Americans from being persuaded by charlatans like Donald Trump. We have a crisis of honesty and competency in this land and we will endure many more Donald Trumps until we become both smarter and more honest. I think this event makes it possible for Trump to beat Biden in '24 if both are the nominees of their respective political parties. Heaven help us.

Very good thoughts. I am sympathetic to what Biden inherited but he wanted this. He was supposed to be the adult in the room. I assume that we will learn a lot of details of an incompetent plan in the future, and it will rightly be a stain on Biden’s legacy.

As to what you are alluding to with your last sentence, I am very pessimistic about the political future of the country. It has become too unwieldy. It can barely govern itself, let alone win political and military wars abroad. I honestly think we are seeing the beginning of the end of what the US was supposed to be. Not that there are many other shining candles out there, but we were supposed to be something better. We are currently failing on many counts.

[BigFatMeanie]

I think it was from a show on Netflix...


Or maybe it was you didn't notice the viking dude..


Or some of the other dudes that were invited to the after party...

That Taliban in the red hat on the left doesn't exactly have good muzzle discipline.

[Goatnapper'96]

I'll take any further discussion to the COVID thread, but the problem is this: The Biden administration is acting like zero COVID is a reasonable goal and it is painfully obvious now that it is not. Every country across the world is getting hit by delta regardless of their strategy pre-vaccine or their vaccination rates. The messaging should be COVID is here to stay so please get vaccinated. If you are vaccinated you are safe, if you are not you are risking serious illness and death but regardless we are going back to normal.

I think "safer than you would be if you were not vaccinated." I am not sure if that is possible given how black and white our tribalistic civilization has become but our inability to see that there is no silver bullet or panacea that can protect us all is part of our problem.

Virus is just going to virus and we can take steps to best protect ourselves and go on living our lives. Could you imagine the next attack on the US that is significant in how we have weaponized fear in our political discourse? God bless the lucky side to not be in charge when bad shit happens.

[Jeff Lebowski]

For sure. But similar to JFK and the Bay of Pigs, Joe either needed to change course, or provide the proper protection for his allies the plan was putting in danger. Abandoning them is absolutely shameful, regardless of what has happened over the past 20 years. The buck stops with him even though his predecessor was one of our worst ever. It didn't clean the stain, but at least JFK admitted his error and met with the survivors and their families.


I saw that. And it's just as gross as Biden officials playing Baghdad Bob on TV pretending that our former allies aren't falling to their deaths after clinging to our military transports that are abandoning them to torture and death.

Biden's national security advisor was on the Today show today and he did a horrible job. Not sure how you put lipstick on this pig, but his answers were awful. Evasive and completely disingenuous.

[BigFatMeanie]

Afghan security forces are as weak as the Dallas Cowboys' D. They are amazingly weak willed. And we can't expect to have the support of the good citizens of the US to support fighting indefinitely. For crap's sake, we've been there nearly 20 years! We learn nothing from history, and repeat it time and again. Tell me I'm wrong.

I agree with you. I wonder how the "experts" would answer the question of why the afghan security forces were amazingly weak willed?

[Goatnapper'96]

That Taliban in the red hat on the left doesn't exactly have good muzzle discipline.

Oh shit- you shot El Guapo!

[Moliere]

not sure what the alternative is here. a skeleton crew of special ops guys and drones is not going to hold territory or make the afghani military an effective fighting force. they’ve had 20 years and a blank check. at the end of the day, you save american lives and do what you can for the cooperative afghani populace. it might be politically damning, but it’s the right moral and practical choice.

Most of the criticism isn’t about pulling out of Afghanistan. It was inevitable that we’d get out and the taliban would take over, or at least that seems to be the position of people who know what they are talking about. This does seem to be a good moral choice made by both trump and Biden.

the criticism is that we apparently either didn’t have a good plan to get out or we wholly under estimated the speed with which the taliban would retake everything, this getting caught with our pants down.