We need universal background checks on books, guys.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1492089973738287105?t=inhmsd2BMoF-DP-JtPJeMQ&s=19


Frankly, we couldn't have had a worse president as far as foreign policy goes.

Congress actually did something good this week. Both the House and Senate have now passed a bill ending forced arbitration in sexual harassment/assault cases. The law make it illegal to have forced arbitration for sexual harassment/assault in contracts and that clause will become void in any contract that has it currently.

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/10/1079843645/congress-approves-bill-to-end-forced-arbitration-in-sexual-assault-cases

Seems like a solid move to me. Could you elaborate on your issue with it?

That's the Afghan Central Bank money that includes money from ordinary Afghan citizens. It is ludicrous that it should be used for litigation regarding 9/11 families. Especially HALF.

It's Biden using Afghan money to boost his low popularity.

The move to use this funding to provide compensation for the families of 9/11 victims was passed down by a Federal Court, not directly by the Biden Administration. The Biden Administration has essentially announced that they wouldn't object to half of the money being used for that purpose, however they are requesting the ability to use the other half for humanitarian aid. This still needs to be approved by the courts. 

While it could be argued that the Administration could have objected to any funding being transferred to the 9/11 families, I don't think it is entirely accurate to state that these monetary moved are simply the direct result of the Biden Administration's foreign policy goals. The Federal Courts are largely the ones making these decisions. 

Further, the question of what to do with this money should it be returned is still very complicated. First of all, much of the money is in the form of foreign exchange funds generated largely off the back of American investment. While some of the money held the central bank is money owed to private banks as part of their total holdings (ie Savings accounts), there isn't really a good answer as to what to do with this money.

As this is money held by the central bank, releasing it will release it to the Taliban to then decide how to proceed. We cannot simply release some of the funds to ordinary Afghan citizens. In order to return their money, we need to release money to the Taliban, who we still do not recognize as an official government of Afghanistan. Then we need to hope that this money actually returns to the people.

So, what is the good option here? If $3.5bn is used on humanitarian efforts, that will be far more than the roughly $0.5bn dollars of private holdings from the Central Bank, and this also isn't including any additional investment that the United States will continue to make in Afghanistan.

Finally, I don't believe for a second that this move will have any appreciable effect on Biden's popularity. This seems like a fairly reasonable middle ground approach to a situation which largely has no good answers.

I was not interested in this discussion until you made this reply.  Sundin made a pretty good reply as to why he disagrees with your stance, I am very interested to know why you believe that this is some type of political stunt to improve Biden's popularity.

Not a single Afghani contributed to the 9/11 attacks, you're better off taking money from the Saudis, and even then, you'd be wrong to do so because people of the country shouldn't be punished because of what few criminals did. Absolutely disgusting. I remember when Trump used to say "we will take their oils" and we were rightfully outraged by it, at least he was truthful in his approach. Americans investments? more like paybacks for using Afghanistan as playgrounds for American war machines. 

So, are you saying that we should release $7bn to the Taliban?

Ahh the complexity of this situation.  So do you have a solution to the problem.  We unfreeze the money and all of it goes to the Taliban.  Do you believe any of that money goes back to its citizens.  I also remember another situation where Obama gave back money to Iran, which also was their money we froze and the GOP and conservatives had a field day with that move.  I guess you can say this is a no win kobayashi maru type of situation.  There is no real right answer only specific consequences to each decisions.