President Biden's Withdrawal From Afghanistan. Your thoughts?

    • BlackParadePixie wrote:

      Ahhh yes...the "capitol riots" So dangerous...that nobody has been indicted yet for anything more than weapons charges, basically.
      Well, except for assault, conspiracy, disorderly conduct, violent entry, obstruction, inflicting bodily injury and numerous charges about impeding, as well as others, yeah, nothing more than weapons charges. Weapons charges are felonies as well as some of the others, so anyone convicted not only loses the right to legally own a firearm but also the right to vote.

    • I don't think it was a good idea but hindsight is 20/20. It really shows how the US failed to set up a state which would hold up. The Afghan government was pretty bound up in the Presidency which is bizarre for a diverse country where what matters is often local. Maybe a looser more federal system could have worked better with different regions governing local matters. Even with changes, it seems clear that the government and army was still reliant on US forces and maybe years of preparation would be needed for a chance for this government to not quickly collapse when the US withdrew. A lot of things improved though. Women got education and people lived much freer lives in their city. Afghanistan is a very young country. A significant amount of the population won't remember anything before the US-backed government. Maybe, with another decade and reforms to how the government worked and an effort to root out corruption, the government could have maintained power over at least the cities but there just wasn't the political will or vision in the US.

      As for how the withdrawal was conducted. I think it was silly for the Biden administration to attempt to stick to some of the Trump deal with the Taliban. The US should have kept more troops and stayed as long as necessary to get citizens and refugees out. I don't think the Afghan army would collapse as long as the US could continue to support it. And I think the actual chaotic withdrawal shows that the Taliban were unwilling to provoke American military might that could jeopardise US forces eventually leaving.
      What's up, my dudes?

    • maseb wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      Ahhh yes...the "capitol riots" So dangerous...that nobody has been indicted yet for anything more than weapons charges, basically.
      Well, except for assault, conspiracy, disorderly conduct, violent entry, obstruction, inflicting bodily injury and numerous charges about impeding, as well as others, yeah, nothing more than weapons charges. Weapons charges are felonies as well as some of the others, so anyone convicted not only loses the right to legally own a firearm but also the right to vote.
      Get back to me when they actually charge someone with treason.

    • elsa wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      Ahhh yes...the "capitol riots" So dangerous...that nobody has been indicted yet for anything more than weapons charges, basically.
      You don’t think the Jan 6 riot wasn’t a big deal? That the threat and intent wasn’t a concern?
      Those who broke any actual laws should be punished...otherwise, no. Everything about the Jan. 6 riots is nothing but political theatre.

    • BlackParadePixie wrote:

      elsa wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      Ahhh yes...the "capitol riots" So dangerous...that nobody has been indicted yet for anything more than weapons charges, basically.
      You don’t think the Jan 6 riot wasn’t a big deal? That the threat and intent wasn’t a concern?
      Those who broke any actual laws should be punished...otherwise, no. Everything about the Jan. 6 riots is nothing but political theatre.
      With all due respect, the political theatre did cost a policeman his life.
      Keyboard not found. Press F1 for help.

    • i'll hit 2 points:

      i think the attempted pull out of Afghanistan under trump would have gone better. taliban russian and everyone else knew that if trump said "this is the plan if you behave" they had better behave because they didn't know what his response would be...they tested obama didn't get much reaction so took a calculated move with biden and were correct that they could do what they wanted he wasn't going to stand up and fight again. we were well over due to be out of afghanistan, the area has been in term oil since biblical times but the people weren't ready for us to leave so we should have changed our methods of teaching.

      the capital riots were no better nor worse than any of the other riot across the country last year so until the riotors that burned down cities across our country so can't use them as an excuse for anything about afghanistan

    • Pultost wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      elsa wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      Ahhh yes...the "capitol riots" So dangerous...that nobody has been indicted yet for anything more than weapons charges, basically.
      You don’t think the Jan 6 riot wasn’t a big deal? That the threat and intent wasn’t a concern?
      Those who broke any actual laws should be punished...otherwise, no. Everything about the Jan. 6 riots is nothing but political theatre.
      With all due respect, the political theatre did cost a policeman his life.
      But it also cost a protester her life too. Lost of life in any situation is abhorrent.

      Why aren't there any criminal indictments from the George Floyd riots and unrest in several U.S. cities last summer. Those "Protests" caused a lot more deaths and destructions that the Capitol "Riots" on Jan. 6th. The problem with this country is that there are 2 sets of "justice" depending on your politics! SAD!!

      Yes. This is :off:
      Vivimus Volare, Volamus Vivere,

    • D. Falcon_11 wrote:

      Pultost wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      elsa wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      Ahhh yes...the "capitol riots" So dangerous...that nobody has been indicted yet for anything more than weapons charges, basically.
      You don’t think the Jan 6 riot wasn’t a big deal? That the threat and intent wasn’t a concern?
      Those who broke any actual laws should be punished...otherwise, no. Everything about the Jan. 6 riots is nothing but political theatre.
      With all due respect, the political theatre did cost a policeman his life.
      But it also cost a protester her life too. Lost of life in any situation is abhorrent.
      Why aren't there any criminal indictments from the George Floyd riots and unrest in several U.S. cities last summer. Those "Protests" caused a lot more deaths and destructions that the Capitol "Riots" on Jan. 6th. The problem with this country is that there are 2 sets of "justice" depending on your politics! SAD!!

      Yes. This is :off:
      That's right, it slipped my mind, but I remember now. Two deaths too many.
      Keyboard not found. Press F1 for help.

    • I keep reading people's comments and thinking are any of you sure that's right

      Would Trump have done better? - didn't he original give the date (the middle of "killing season" so the worst time) knowing if he was out of office was someone elses problem. And he has an amazing record on women's rights so would he really condemn what was happening. Also how much of the extraction plan was made over years, by military personnel (not the president, I'm not sure how much say he'd have in the logics)

      No one could have seen this happening this way? - ok the ridiculously quick take over maybe not. But every knew that without any defence the country would be taken over. If its unwillingness from the Afghan people, or internal corruption or influence that made locals constantly fight for the Taliban with the training given from military. And also the incorrect training (us, uk or any other military with massive resources training isn't going to work when you remove all the machines and weaponry and leave the locals with limited resources)

      Taliban are not a terrorist organisation? - try telling the locals who resist, or the young girls that won't ever get educated again, or women being beaten or whatever for breaking rules. Added that someone detonated explosives on civilians when they were at an airport trying to flee. Sound terrifying to me. And an extremist utopia is a good place for extremism to live (even if it's not supported by government)

      Good Friend :play: Kinda Romantic :love: Ready to Rock :zomg:

      "If you try to follow fashion you'll always be chasing, and probably never catch it. If you be yourself and make your own style, fashion might just bump into you one day."

    • The fact is that a vast majority of Americans supported withdrawing from Afghanistan, but after a couple weeks of the war-mongering mainstream media losing their shit over it, suddenly "it was a bad idea" is the dominant narrative. I'm not saying nothing could've gone better, and clearly Biden and the government moronically assumed the Taliban wouldn't take over for months and executed the withdrawal on that bad intel. Nonetheless, the fact that the Afghan government and army folded so quickly is proof that our twenty-year adventure there was largely inconsequential. We shouldn't have been "nation building". We went there to root out Al-Qaeda and to kill Bin Laden, who had been hiding out in the borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan at the time of 9/11. Why did we stay there for another decade after Bin Laden was killed (in Pakistan nonetheless)?

      Afghanistan did not become some kind of "first world" paradise under the American occupation. It's true that life improved in some cities, especially Kabul. But in much of the countryside, life was worse than ever, in part because it was an active war zone for all those years. Many rural Afghans were no worse off under the Taliban and many were worse off under the American-backed warlords. There's a reason why many in the countryside simply let the Taliban take over. It wasn't that they were cowards, it's that they could feel the way the wind was blowing, hadn't been any better off, and figured it wasn't worth it. The Afghan government was corrupt to a high degree. Much of the money the U.S. invested in Afghanistan ended up in the pockets of government officials and very little of it ended up in the countryside, which is where most Afghans live. It did not inspire confidence nor bring people in the countryside to its cause.

      Ending a twenty-year war is messy. There wasn't going to be a smooth, fairy tale ending. It was not a victory. We were capitulating to the Taliban either way. That was going to happen no matter who oversaw the withdrawal.

      Re. whether Trump would've done it better, the point is moot as he did not oversee the withdrawal, though anyone with half a brain could've predicted that the Taliban would not uphold any part of a "deal". Trump likely wanted the withdrawal complete before the 2020 election, was told how bad it could be, and decided against it. The last thing he wanted was to look weak. Less of a problem with Biden.

      As for downplaying Jan. 6th, remember that these were riots fueled by a lie about the integrity of the election encouraged by politicians and others in power. It wasn't just a "protest gone bad", it was a deliberate attempt to undermine a democratic election. So yes, I do think it has symbolic significance beyond the fact that it didn't result in as many smashed windows as the George Floyd riots. Both certainly involved rioting and calling one "protest" and the other "riot" just proves you're engaging in political games, and not with the facts. You're just sympathizing with either one because those people are your "brothers in ideology", they're you're "team". Try looking beyond that.

      Maybe America will lose its taste for "forever wars" and failed "nation building" after Afghanistan and Iraq, but somehow I doubt it. We certainly didn't learn anything from Vietnam other than to have a volunteer army, an important lesson to be sure, but one that only ensures our wars are more distant and detached from reality and thus easier to support.

    • BlackParadePixie wrote:

      maseb wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      Ahhh yes...the "capitol riots" So dangerous...that nobody has been indicted yet for anything more than weapons charges, basically.
      Well, except for assault, conspiracy, disorderly conduct, violent entry, obstruction, inflicting bodily injury and numerous charges about impeding, as well as others, yeah, nothing more than weapons charges. Weapons charges are felonies as well as some of the others, so anyone convicted not only loses the right to legally own a firearm but also the right to vote.
      Get back to me when they actually charge someone with treason.
      Well not likely to happen since "treason" is defined in the Constitution as aiding the enemy in wartime. "Treason" doesn't apply to a whole lot of things people think it does.

    • HeyCameron wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      maseb wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      Ahhh yes...the "capitol riots" So dangerous...that nobody has been indicted yet for anything more than weapons charges, basically.
      Well, except for assault, conspiracy, disorderly conduct, violent entry, obstruction, inflicting bodily injury and numerous charges about impeding, as well as others, yeah, nothing more than weapons charges. Weapons charges are felonies as well as some of the others, so anyone convicted not only loses the right to legally own a firearm but also the right to vote.
      Get back to me when they actually charge someone with treason.
      Well not likely to happen since "treason" is defined in the Constitution as aiding the enemy in wartime. "Treason" doesn't apply to a whole lot of things people think it does.
      You might need to look here:

      uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?pa…chapter115&edition=prelim

    • HeyCameron wrote:

      Maybe America will lose its taste for "forever wars" and failed "nation building" after Afghanistan and Iraq, but somehow I doubt it.
      imo this is a bad thing. Iraq - which is in a better state now than it was under Saddam - and Afghanistan were poorly conducted interventions. However, swearing off liberal interventionism wholesale is a terrible mistake and will leave millions to preventable unnecessary deprivation and oppression. Yes, the US must focus on containing China and Russia than fighting insurgents, but liberal democratic nations must also stand for fostering freedom in the developing world. This is not just an American problem. Countries from Canada to Germany to New Zealand critically underspend on their militaries and should be more responsible. However, the US must lead because no-one else will - the EU has not integrated to the state where it is even close to a credible foreign policy leader compared to the US - and the current climate in the US, with tariffs on Canadians goods and not consulting enough with allies about Afghanistan, puts that in jeopardy. The US needs to be in the place like where they will intervene in Kosovo and not in the place where the developed world just watches the Rwandan genocide happen. I fear the hysteria over this "forever war" dove mentality will push the US towards the latter.
      What's up, my dudes?

    • ProbsN1 wrote:

      HeyCameron wrote:

      Maybe America will lose its taste for "forever wars" and failed "nation building" after Afghanistan and Iraq, but somehow I doubt it.
      imo this is a bad thing. Iraq - which is in a better state now than it was under Saddam - and Afghanistan were poorly conducted interventions. However, swearing off liberal interventionism wholesale is a terrible mistake and will leave millions to preventable unnecessary deprivation and oppression. Yes, the US must focus on containing China and Russia than fighting insurgents, but liberal democratic nations must also stand for fostering freedom in the developing world. This is not just an American problem. Countries from Canada to Germany to New Zealand critically underspend on their militaries and should be more responsible. However, the US must lead because no-one else will - the EU has not integrated to the state where it is even close to a credible foreign policy leader compared to the US - and the current climate in the US, with tariffs on Canadians goods and not consulting enough with allies about Afghanistan, puts that in jeopardy. The US needs to be in the place like where they will intervene in Kosovo and not in the place where the developed world just watches the Rwandan genocide happen. I fear the hysteria over this "forever war" dove mentality will push the US towards the latter.
      But it's never been the case that we only intervene for humanitarian reasons. It's not as if we invaded Iraq to "spread freedom". We did so because we incorrectly believed that Saddam's regime had weapons of mass destruction and that his regime was somehow involved with 9/11 (not to mention the motive of control of Iraq's oil reserves). There are plenty of places around the world that are in dire straits where we have not intervened (Myanmar, Chad, Honduras, to name a few) because those places are of no strategic value. That does not mean we do not meet humanitarian goals in these places; but that is never the only or even the primary motive for getting involved in these countries' conflicts and often we simply make them worse. I'm not arguing for absolute non-interventionism. Our treaties and alliances oblige us to intervene sometimes and I'm not saying we should pull out of those obligations. But I am also opposed to imperialism and "world policing". Especially when our interventions often consist of clumsily imposing democracy on places that have little experience with it and without respecting the country's existing institutions and traditions or propping up weak, violent, and corrupt governments that the people have no faith in.

      Yes, Iraq may be better right now, but the formation of ISIS and the devastation they wrought would not have happened had we not invaded. Intervening leaves a power vacuum if we have no alternative to replace the ousted dictator or regime. If we are going to intervene, then we need to make sure we understand the culture of the nation we're intervening in, we need to make an effort to learn the language and understand its culture and traditions, we cannot just give money to corrupt governments and leaders who will squander it, we need to engage on the ground and not simply attack with drones, killing civilians, and thus creating more motive for people to join the insurgency. These interventions have a way of sabotaging themselves over time.

      And if we really care about the plight of other nations and peoples, how about we do more that's strictly humanitarian? Why don't we do something for the Haitians assembled at the border instead of mass deporting them to a country we know is in shambles? War is only one way we can intervene to help oppressed and downtrodden people (and it's often not particularly helpful).

    • kathyFL wrote:

      HeyCameron wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      maseb wrote:

      BlackParadePixie wrote:

      Ahhh yes...the "capitol riots" So dangerous...that nobody has been indicted yet for anything more than weapons charges, basically.
      Well, except for assault, conspiracy, disorderly conduct, violent entry, obstruction, inflicting bodily injury and numerous charges about impeding, as well as others, yeah, nothing more than weapons charges. Weapons charges are felonies as well as some of the others, so anyone convicted not only loses the right to legally own a firearm but also the right to vote.
      Get back to me when they actually charge someone with treason.
      Well not likely to happen since "treason" is defined in the Constitution as aiding the enemy in wartime. "Treason" doesn't apply to a whole lot of things people think it does.
      You might need to look here:
      uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?pa…chapter115&edition=prelim
      You actually made Cameron's point. Third section of the link defines exactly what happened on Jan 6, with trying to overturn the confirmation of the election results; the actions were traitorous, not treasonous.


      §2383. Rebellion or insurrection
      Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

    • Good idea was to leave that shithole to revel in bloodshed as they seem to want to. Bad idea was to arm them so they can arm Islamists everywhere.
      But since we know that nowadays great american majority supports Islamist terrorists (reason you elected Biden) I dont know.
      This is what you wanted all along right?