| Jumpin said: Kind of funny how so many from the US are feigning shock at what happened when this is what the US planned for a year and a half. Many are hypocritically switching their opinion, and pretending like they suddenly care about Afghani people, because it's convenient to their political biases to do so. Trump and nearly all of the Democratic Party candidates wanted troops out of Afghanistan (including Bernie and Tulsa). Some Democratic candidates spit bullshit about "I can get us out of there AND prevent a Taliban takeover in my first term" others said an even stupider "Lets get troops out and instead spend money on Afghanistan" not caring that the Taliban would be the recipients. Only two of the many candidates pointed out the consequences and wouldn't commit to a withdrawal - Deval Patrick and Marianne Williamson - and how many people cared enough to actually support them in this? |
| Bandorr said: How do you plan for the taliban to be able to easily pay off the guards because they weren't getting paid? How do you plan for the president of afghanistan to flee the country leaving no bargaining chip on the table? Real questions. It's been a disaster in the making for 20 years. With plenty of it spread across many presidents. |
In my opinion, the issue isn't really that the Taliban took over Afghanistan. That was largely expected. The expectation was largely that it would take a bit longer, but unfortunately that didn't happen, so we have to deal with the worst case scenario on that front.
However, that isn't to say that everything that occurred over the last month was inevitable. First of all, there were steps that we could have taken to give the Afghan government a better chance. The Trump deal made that hard by putting us on a clock for withdrawal, but you'll hear a lot of talk about how we could have better supported the government. Personally, I don't see a ton of value in fighting more to prop up a government doomed to fall.
That leads us to the worse outcome: The humanitarian crisis. I think a lot those who are criticizing the administration, especially from the left, aren't necessarily saying that we shouldn't have left, they are saying that we need to ensure our promises to the people of Afghanistan are upheld. The fact that we are rushing to evacuate people by the thousands, six days before we are planning to leave should tell you that this hasn't gone smoothly. Again, there was a lot of politics and bureaucracy making things difficult for the Biden Administration, but that doesn't excuse their failures. To say "You supported the withdrawal so this blood is on your hands" is over-simplifying the issue. The Administration could have and should have done better at working on these evacuations for the last six months, and if they did it is likely we wouldn't be seeing so many scenes of chaos across Kabul.
However, I will say that over the past week, I applaud the administration for its work getting people out, and I do think that certain other coalition countries deserve some criticism. There has been a lot of talk from other countries imploring the US not to leave at the end of the month to give more time, yet at the same time, these countries are making commitments to cease evacuations as soon as tomorrow. They relied on America to be the world police and now that we are stepping back, they would rather complain about us than step up.
