yes and all the counter factuals getting laundered by military mouth pieces was in an attempt to get biden to get entangled in something he couldn't get out of. the delay had a risk of escalation and luckily it didn't play out as the Taliban has honored it so far.
The dissenting voices were proven to be correct though, on the basis of Biden’s confidence of one month ago vs. what actually happened. The US were unprepared when leaving and that has resulted in people left behind that shouldn’t be. The Taliban did not honour their agreements either. Indeed they ended up in Kabul, as claiming that the Taliban are one singular force is quite delusional. Again, this comes down to Biden making his own decisions. No ifs or buts. We are simply going to have to agree to disagree. I think it was a mess, the worst aspects of that were avoidable. And I think it’s done lasting harm to Biden’s presidency. C’est ça.
for like the 60th time, the collapse is more evidence that we should have bounced probably even earlier, but very much confirms bidens calculation that to delay it anymore would have required a massive troop surge and likely extended combat that he found unacceptable. if the argument is the us could have run massive evacuations without destabilizing the afghan government and precipitating what happened i also find that extremely not convincing. they told everyone to leave in May, the ONE aspect I'll agree on is the lag in processing visa application backlogs over the three months, but I'm not knowledgable enough to know how to navigate that. the bold is also not true at this point
if your counter factuals accept the premise that the afghan government was going to collapse immediately and the afghan military was going to barely give resistance, you'd be operating from a stance that the US could just run massive evacuations and cause those things to happen. it's silly revisionism and would lead to the exact same critiques happening now, but imo much worse because there'd have been no attempt on a better outcome.
But it is true. Thousands of visas were left unissued. You are straddling a line here of claiming it was messy on the other and then saying it wasn’t. This is a failure, there are no ifs or buts about it. But two other U.S. officials described growing impatience across the Biden administration with the State Department’s inability to process visas more quickly, as thousands of Afghans who had already risked their lives to ally with the United States waited fearfully outside the gate of the international airport in Kabul. One of the officials described how challenging it was to ensure that those who helped the United States could reach the airport safely with other Afghans also trying to evacuate and the Taliban operating checkpoints across the capital. ADVERTISEMENT Officials also echoed refugee advocates, who accused the State Department of having been caught flat-footed in processing the special immigrant visas for Afghans — even though President Biden announced in April that the American military would be leaving by the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. “There are tens of thousands of Americans and Afghans literally at the gate,” said Sunil Varghese, the policy director for the International Refugee Assistance Project. “This could have been completely avoided if evacuation was part of the military withdrawal. This was avoidable, and we’re at the 11th hour now.”
i'm saying it was ALWAYS going to be messy, no matter what alternative calculations I've seen posited run into the same issues. luckily the visa issue is getting cleaned up as we speak as the massive evacuations are happening. also moving faster because a crisis has led many other countries that in a normal scenario would not have stepped up.
The counter factual is you claiming that military leaders who were cautious were just hawks to Lee him there. In reality, many of them were correct on the risk of being overran quickly. Biden took that risk. The intelligence had narrowed the risk from 6 months to 3, with many voices saying it could happen quicker internally. Some didn’t, that’s a judgement call by Biden that he made. That judgement call resulted in what we saw, and how the US government has been unprepared to properly process visas for people who need to leave. It’s a mess and it’s the main reason he has been criticised. People are being disingenuous here on the one hand saying that it was messy but then defending it to the specific criticisms made. Which is it?
But issues like Visas were entirely in their control. Yes or no, are you critical of the US Government for failing to have Visa applications processed as they were pulling out?
We only needed another decade and a trillion more dollars to finish building our nation sized refugee ejection tube. Sleepy Joe got impatient.
We have food insecurtiy with lots of children, veterans sleeping on the street, ppl wrecked financially b/c they get sick, etc. But let's continue to spend tens of billions each year on a fairy tale Afghani govt that has no teeth.
Policy choices based on public opinion/outrage as manufactured by the media. Focus on shit that matters.
That money could've went to cancelling student loans and fixing that terrible policy mistake of the last 20 years
Dubowitz is head of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an organization whose name kind of gives the game away.
The worst is all the presidents who kept it going instead of ending it and having it look bad on their watch
How about we stop engaging with the dumbasses? Y’all blame us for not banning him because you guys continue to engage them is definitely a moderation problem. There’s no rules being broken, he’s just a fucking idiot. Ignore him or keep bitching I guess?