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Which is really weird considering wasn't he literally following the timeline Trump set out? A timeline that was almost certainly concocted to screw over the Democrat if Trump lost and that Trump wouldn't have actually stuck to if he won?
Funny how you say that..
It is on Biden, he didn't have to stick to Trump's controversial deal with the Taliban, he could have had a spine and given a statement about how he supports bringing the troops home but that leaving Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban will only put them at more risk in the future and how Trump made a fool of us by dealing with them. But no, every liberal has to treat Biden like he has no agency, like he didn't continue negotiating with the Taliban and eventually gave the final withdrawl orders leaving locals who helped the US to fend for themselves.
This thread is full of the most absolutely bizarre takes imaginable.
The war in Afghanistan was a complete failure from start to finish and was only ever about making more money for arms manufacturers and oil companies. At literally any point in the decades long occupation, the best thing to do would be to immediately withdraw. The decision to withdraw was one of the best policy decisions any president has made in my lifetime (an admittedly low bar). I was hoping and praying for that decision for literally 20 years of my life. Personally, I'd tend to credit Biden with it since he was the one who actually followed through and accepted the political fallout from all the psychopathic hawks in the media.
And I come in here and the two sides are, "Biden good because [incredibly good and necessary decision] was actually Trump's fault!" vs "Biden bad because [incredibly good and necessary decision] was Biden's fault!"
How on earth has everyone in here come to this conclusion that if we prolonged the war even another 20 years, we could accomplish something we completely and utterly failed to do in that time? Even our own puppet government was telling us to leave. If you want to blame someone for losing the war, blame Bush, because the war was already lost within the first year at most. I literally cannot comprehend how anyone could look at that situation and want us to stay unless they were directly profiting from it.
Rationally, I know that liberals are bloodthirsty warmongerers who worship Khorne and want to build mountains of skulls and all, but like aren't you supposed to keep up some kind of pretence of not just wanting to turn a country into a perpetual slaughterhouse?
Excuse me? It's spelled "Koɿ n".
It was a no-win situation. If he stayed, the Republicans who pretended to care about war being a bad thing would have raked him over the coals about throwing out future FIFA peace prize recipient Donald Trump's flawless exit strategy.
And we see that when he went through with it anyway what a fucking mess it was, and they blamed him for it imploding anyway.
I'm of the firm opinion that we could have occupied Afghanistan for a century and the result upon exiting would have resulted in the exact same outcome. There were perhaps better ways to do a drawdown that wouldn't result in leaving billions of dollars worth of military hardware, vehicles and munitions behind for the Taliban to sieze and use for themselves, but it still eventually had to happen and we got what we got.
Democracy can't be given to someone else. It must be hard fought for and won by the people themselves, or it's value will never become apparent to them.
I agree, and think you summarized it well. There was no win, and somehow Biden chose the worst way possible, leave the Taliban with billions of military equipment and abandoning everyone who helped the US, despite NOT sticking to Trump's original timeline so be couldn't even use that excuse.
He was under massive pressure to pull out because everyone was tired of this costly losing occupation, and he fucked up the pullout. That's on him.
So I didn't go into everything in my comment because I was specifically only commenting on that one aspect. But I'm actually mad at Biden because I know he had agency in the process and didn't have to hang all those interpreters out to dry, or leave a ton of fully functional hardware for the Taliban to use. I'm not trying to excuse Biden for his actions, I'm saying it's weird that he chose to step on the landmine that Trump left for him rather than do anything to make leaving not a disaster and then just chose to eat the criticism after.
Like I'm glad that he did actually leave rather than staying and occupying Afghanistan forever. But I agree with what was said in that other comment that basically it was a no-win situation and Biden chose the worst possible way he could have left.
Trump had already given away anything that would given Biden bargaining power. It was a deliberate setup.