From: De-Trois-Leaning <dtl@invalid.net>
Newsgroups: rec.food.cooking,can.politics,alt.home.repair,alt.politics.trump,alt.military
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Re:_OT:_=22I'm_Worried_About_Graham=22._=f0=9f=99=8f?=
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2024 10:04:29 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Dave Smith wrote:
> On 2024-11-15 9:44 a.m., Ed P wrote:
>> On 11/15/2024 1:54 AM, Leonard Blaisdell wrote:
>>
>>> Tell me again how Trump was responsible for the clown show withdrawl
>>> from Afghanistan. I love to laugh. DEI! DEI! DEI!
>>>
>>
>> He did make a deal with the Taliban. Seems he has a bit of
>> responsibility too.
>
> Oh course he was. It was negotiated by his administration.
So what - they had every opportunity to review and reneg if conditions
were not to par, and they BLEW that chance:
https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/biden-officials-warnings-crumbling-security-afghan-withdrawal-rcna170121
In the months before the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden
administration officials âwatered downâ warnings about crumbling
security and failed to launch an emergency evacuation of Americans and
Afghan allies until it was too late, says a new report by House Republicans.
âOur investigation reveals the Biden-Harris administration had the
information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the
inevitable collapse of the Afghan government," said Rep. Michael McCaul,
R-Texas, the committee's chair. "At each step of the way, however, the
administration picked optics over security."
Biden bungled the execution of the withdrawal itself.
After Biden announced in April that all U.S. troops would leave by the
end of August, an employee at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul described being
stunned that âour posture had not shifted to a point that we could get
out relatively easily,â the report said, citing the State Department
documents. Embassy staff members âtried to raise these issues in various
ways, but post leadership never wanted to hear it,â the report said.
By July 13, 2021, 26 officials and staff members at the embassy wrote to
senior leadership about their concerns in a âdissent cable,â the State
Departmentâs official channel for expressing internal disagreements.
Warning the Afghan government would lose control in Kabul soon after
American troops departed, the cable urged the State Department to take
its evacuation planning seriously, address the backlog of visa
applications from Afghans who worked for the U.S. government and secure
the safety of those aiding the embassy in Afghanistan.
The report focuses heavily on what it said was a failure by the White
House and the State Department to plan for an emergency evacuation of
Americans and Afghans out of the country in case of a Taliban takeover.
It also criticized what it said was the Biden administrationâs failure
to promptly order the evacuation once circumstances deteriorated.
In previous testimony to the committee, Army Gen. Mark Milley, the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the withdrawal,
said the State Departmentâs decision not to request an evacuation of
personnel until Aug. 15 â the day Kabul fell to the Taliban â was a
âfundamental mistakeâ that led to the frenzied scenes at the Kabul airport.
> If the
> election had not been stolen from him, as he claims, the withdrawal
> would have happened under his second regime.
Who had EVERY OPPORTUNITY to review, reneg, alter, or do NOTHING if the
Taliban missed their promises, and they did!
https://www.heritage.org/heritage-national-security-experts-never-forget-bidens-botched-afghanistan-withdrawal-killed-13
âThree years after the disastrous withdrawal from Kabul where 13
Americans were killed at Abbey Gate, the Taliban paraded abandoned U.S.
military equipment reminding us of the steep costs of embarrassingly bad
decisions made by the Biden-Harris administration.
âThe Biden-Harris administration has returned control of Afghanistan to
the Talibanânow the best equipped terrorist state in history. The 2,459
U.S. military personnel and 20,769 wounded in action in Afghanistan did
not serve for this end result.
âISIS is rebuilding, Al-Qaeda is resurgent, the administration is
reportedly paying the Taliban $30-40 million a week, and weâve not
conducted an âover the horizonâ counterterrorism strike since the
withdrawal.â
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/15/afghanistan-withdrawal-pullout-military-taliban-chaos-evacuation-biden-inhofe/
After taking office, Biden undertook a superficial review of our
Afghanistan policyâone that totally ignored the advice of his top
military advisor and his commanders on the ground. On April 14, 2021, he
reversed the Trump administrationâs conditions-based drawdown policy and
announced that all U.S. forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by
Sept. 11 of that year, whether or not the Taliban had met its
commitments under the 2020 agreement.
Today is a deeply sad anniversary. One year ago, the Taliban seized
Kabul, the Afghan government collapsed, and U.S. President Joe Biden
ordered a hasty and chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan. When the crisis
ended two weeks later, 13 U.S. service members had been killed and
hundreds or more U.S. citizens had been left behind to fend for
themselves under the Talibanâs brutal rule.
Future historians will ask how a global superpower like the United
States seemed so unprepared for Afghanistanâs unraveling. Hereâs what
they should know: Almost everyone who paid any attention to Afghanistan
saw it comingâeveryone, that is, except Biden and his insular circle of
advisors.
The United States went to war in Afghanistan following the 9/11
terrorist attacks for two main reasons: to punish those responsible and
to prevent any future attacks from being planned and organized from
Afghan soil. The two-decade war was costly, not least to our men and
women in uniform: 2,448 U.S. service members were killed and 20,752
service members were wounded during the war. Yet the U.S.-led effort
also helped sustain an Afghan government that, for all of its many
shortcomings, prevented the Talibanâs resurgence, countered al Qaeda and
the Islamic State, and afforded Afghans unprecedented freedoms for
nearly two decades.
Nobody wanted a âforever warâ in AfghanistanâI certainly didnât. Thatâs
why I supported then-U.S. President Donald Trumpâs February 2020
agreement with the Taliban, which conditioned the withdrawal of U.S.
troops from Afghanistan on the Talibanâs implementation of wide-ranging
counterterrorism commitments. In the interim, Trump right-sized the U.S.
force posture, reducing troop levels from roughly 12,000 service members
in February 2020 to 2,500 service members (according to U.S. Defense
Department numbers) by the time he left officeâa sufficient presence for
supporting the Afghan governmentâs security efforts and ensuring that
the Taliban kept their end of the bargain.
After taking office, Biden undertook a superficial review of our
Afghanistan policyâone that totally ignored the advice of his top
military advisor and his commanders on the ground. On April 14, 2021, he
reversed the Trump administrationâs conditions-based drawdown policy and
announced that all U.S. forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by
Sept. 11 of that year, whether or not the Taliban had met its
commitments under the 2020 agreement.
The only thing that has been âdecimatedâ in Afghanistan, to borrow
Bidenâs term, is everything that U.S. service members sacrificed to build.
Eight days after Bidenâs announcement, the commander of U.S. Central
Command, U.S. Marines Gen. Kenneth âFrankâ McKenzie Jr., told the Senate
Armed Services Committee that he was concerned about the âability of the
Afghan military to hold the ground that theyâre on now without the
support that they have been used to for many years.â He also
acknowledged that counterterrorism strikes would be much harder without
a U.S. presence.
In May 2021, USA Today reported that Afghan translators, who had worked
alongside U.S. personnel for years, feared that the Taliban would take
over and kill them once U.S. troops departed. They begged the Biden
administration for helpâand members of Congress, on both sides of the
aisle, echoed their pleas to start evacuating U.S. citizens and
partners. Meanwhile, the Taliban saw Bidenâs unconditional withdrawal as
an invitation to ramp up their offensive. Afghan government forces stood
down because they saw no chance of winning without U.S. support.
Throughout this period, Biden refused to reexamine his policy. On July
8, 2021, even as the Taliban were on the march, he insisted that the
Talibanâs takeover of Afghanistan was not yet inevitable. Meanwhile, his
administration refused to expedite the evacuation of U.S. citizens and
Afghan partners because it feared this would signal a lack of confidence
in the Afghan government.
When the Taliban finally entered Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, they took the
Afghan capital without a fight. Even with many thousands of U.S.
citizens and Afghan partners still in the country, the Biden
administration stuck to its new, self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline for
completing the withdrawal. The result was utter chaos: Thousands of U.S.
service members were suddenly deployed to Kabulâs international airport
to assist the evacuation effort and contend with masses of ordinary
Afghans desperate to escape Taliban rule.
Our service members rose to the occasion, as they always do, and helped
evacuate around 124,000 people under incredibly difficult circumstances.
But the Islamic State still found a way to exploit the havoc, killing 13
U.S. service members near an airport gate on Aug. 26, 2021. Nearly one
year later, the Biden administration has failed to hold the perpetrators
accountable because the withdrawal has severely diminished U.S.
counterterrorism capabilities in Afghanistan."
Now take your bullshit Trump hate and go fucking kill yourself, you
great whinging canuckleheaded gasbag!
> He would have said
And a giant FUCK YOU TOO - you are NOT an oracle, nor are you possessed
of the slightest factual competence or authority - iow, a pseudo democrap.
Drop damned dead you pecksniff motherfucker!