Very proud to have our Speaker of the House showing such courage against the bullies in China. Good for her for this visit. We need to start putting China back in the box and this is a step in the right direction.
This is the only time I will ever say this: Go Nancy Pelosi!
- Thread starter Willence
- Start date
Yep. I like it. Don’t let china be the boss. Coming from a Republican it’s been a good last 2 days for this administration and country.
Give credit where it is due. Ballsy move by Pelosi. Its not over yet, she still has to get out of there.
Glad we got Zawahri but he was living in an upscale part of Kabul and quite comfortably. That was the case because of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and our horrible stewardship of that area.
Our withdrawal was horrific but he did have the balls to get us out of there and he promised we would still have over the horizon capabilities. Promise kept!
Yep, the look of that was terrible, but I'm convinced that that was just the way it was going to go no matter what. We'd been in there for for 20 freaking years man... training their folks the whole time. As is pointed out above, they had Billions in US equipment.
According to my brief search the Afghan Army was at about 180K troops. I suspect that the actual number was less that than for sure, but you get the idea. An equally brief search shows the Taliban with about 60K fighters. Let's assume a 2:1 advantage to the Afghans.
So the Afghans are fighting with superior weapons and training from defensive positions and the Taliban takes over the whole country in two weeks? REALLY? And from what I saw on the news, the Afghans basically dropped their weapons and ran and the Taliban basically rode into town and claimed victory... After 20 years of training and supplies that's the best they have. I'd suggest that our withdrawal from there was going to go south even if we stayed another 20 years or withdrew over the course of years...
The withdrawal was so f'd up. We should have gotten all the civilians out before the troops withdrew.
I just wish he had spiked all the guns and put sugar in all the engines
I think we should have maintained presence but I see the argument for getting out
this is the opposite reason of why Ukraine is holding its own
Their morale and motivation
The Afghans were not wanting to win
Ukraine wants to win
The withdrawal was nothing less than a complete and total cluster****. Let’s call it what it was and not sugar coat it.
TRump started the withdrawal. left it for biden to finish. Plenty of spare time for it to go hell in a hand basket. At end of day, you cant fight for people who refuse to fight for themselves. it is their country and their war. We never should have been there in the first place.
i was confused at first but when i saw her get off the plane, i was like, you go girl, you American girl !
I agree with getting out, but this statement is purely, not true!
Yes it is.
There was no way that the Afgan Armed forces were going to hold that country w/o American holding the line with them. This isn't some case where there was hard fighting and the Afghan Army gradually lost their hold on the outer areas and every town became an island. The Taliban simply showed up and drove right into town and took over, sometimes w/o a shot being fired. The entire armed forces folded like a cheap lawn chair. If you let your entire country be taken over in two weeks when you outnumber the attackers 2:1 AT LEAST and have better equipment and 20 years of training, you are NEVER going to be a real army.
That was never going to end well and was always going to involve a fighting retreat on the part of the US. Could it have gone better? Absolutely. Could it have gone worse? Absolutely.
The only REAL difference between a Trump led withdrawal and a Biden led withdrawal is who the fingers got pointed at. Because we all know that if this had happened on Trump's watch, he would most definitely be blaming someone else. Because although he's the greatest President in US history except for maybe Lincoln (according to Trump himself), the buck NEVER stops on his desk.
I think we do know.
In what world does the Afghan military go from losing an entire country in a couple of weeks to being able to defend their country? They took 20 years of supplies and training to become who they were. Any chance a few months one way or the other with different training or different equipment changes things? No... like I said above. If you aren't going to get with the program after 20 years, it's not going to happen. This was always going to happen whether we left in 2005 or 2055.
In what would does Donald Trump take the blame for a massive failure? He's very quick to claim credit for anything that goes well, but equally fast in blaming anyone and everyone else for failure. Feel free to show us where Donald Trump says, yep, I blew that call and this is 100% my fault.
Not that I would really blame Trump for this fiasco just like I don't blame Biden totally. I'm sure that the Afghan Army's total collapse in days was a big surprise to the generals that were in charge over there. It wasn't a lack of training or equipment or ability... those things are measurable and our generals should have had an idea of what to expect there. It was just a case of lack will to fight for your country (for whatever reason). The Afghan Army simply quit... in most cases w/o even trying.
The withdrawal was ALWAYS going to go tits up, not the least b/c we as a country felt that the Afghans could hold their own vs the Taliban.
I don’t think the Afghan army’s incompetence came as a surprise to anyone. Afghanistan isn’t a country in any meaningful sense of the word. Barely anyone there is going to fight for Afghanistan when they can just cut a deal with the Taliban and lay down their arms. I think the US quit caring what happened, perhaps rightfully. The money spent was a sunk cost.
We will never know how it would have gone with a full Trump withdrawal. Not to naive to think it would have been absolutely bravo zulu, but not the failure we witness take place!
The part about the collapse of the Afgan military was a well known fact either way, but this administration seem to think otherwise. Color me surprised!
Ballsy but necessary after it was as leaked and surely intentional. It was always all about her.
Imo with Trump we would have at least gotten the weapons out, gotten all the Americans out and the Afghans who were helping us. As it happened under this regime, hundreds were hunted down and beheaded with the totally fubar way Biden did it. Trump should've never said we’d leave imo. Now it’s back to being a Taliban training and staging point for more attacks. We couldve stayed and used drones and satellites to keep the Taliban at bay to some extent without sacrificing more Americans.
Based on what do you think Trump would have done it differently? He didn't exactly handle emergencies very well.
He wouldn't have given up Bagram airbase as a first step in the withdrawal process, it was the only defensible base that wasn't surrounded by close proximity mountains allowing for fire superiority. Kabul is a large city, way too hard to set a security perimeter to ensure safe exfil. He also openly said he never intended to fully withdrawal every troop, which was the right plan.
That said, he would have largely been relying on the same military advisors who appear to be totally inept so who knows.......
republicans criticized the hell out of obama for drone warfare. But, okay, yeah, trump would have saved the world, if only........
This is a tired attempt and absolutely not true! What we have now is evidence that the change in leadership was definitely not for the better!
Again, based on what metric? You can keep saying it, but how do you know that? The financial troubles were coming,It's a worldwide economic issue due to a global pandemic.
We have to go thru this again?
Every left winger thinks trump handled the beginning of the pandemic awful, but just think about what uncle Joe would have done with it at that time.
That's the metric!
Pfftt, in that scenario Biden wins "strongly" lol. Hands down
I can tell what Biden would not have done. He would not have gone on TV everyday and made a damn idiot of himself like Trump did. lmao
