Afghan incompetence
Check on your veteran friends, folks. Just talked to a couple guys who were in afghanistan 10-15 years ago. They are not taking this well. I can imagine it was a similar feeling I felt when I saw police cars going up in flames and my police hq boarded up with no one being arrested last year, but much worse for them.
Our food stamp President follows in his mentorâs footsteps, giving out an additional 25%.
A reminder how Obama was the first Food Stamps president, massively expanding that dependency program.
http://www.trivisonno.com/food-stamps-charts
Meanwhile in the economy, weâve got more job openings than unemployed, so we definitely need more government disincentives for working, right?
Put this one up there with the âmostly peaceful, but fiery protestsâ. Hereâs CNN telling us how friendly the Taliban are as they chant âDeath to Americaâ.
https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1427283078993547267?s=20
Various perspectives on Afghanistan
In the end, President Joseph Biden wasnât ambivalent about the war either. He was willing to watch the jihadists resurrect the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. And so they have.
Two trillion dollars, including nearly $100 billion to train and equip the Afghan security forces. For years, U.S. military commanders touted those forces as the mainstay of a free and safe Afghanistan; the Taliban routed them in a week.
In 2012, I spent six months in Western Afghanistan as a U.S. army officer. While the war had long since ceased to serve any vital national security interest, it became clear why we were there: it provided lucrative opportunities for the defense industry and a relatively safe means of career advancement for senior U.S. officials and military officers.
Despite knowing for months that this day was coming, military planners could not manage to keep many millions of dollars in U.S. equipment from immediately falling into the Talibanâs hands. They failed to arrange safe passage for American personnel now stranded in Afghanistan. Worst of all are the pathetic public attempts to bribe the Taliban by promising future payments to the group only if they refrain from attacking the U.S. embassy. Once again, as happened with ISIS in Iraq, the U.S. has armed its enemy.
China, Russia and Iran are watching a weak and retreating America unable to protect our interests. As a result, America is less safe today. Thatâs the biggest price weâll pay for Bidenâs failure in Afghanistan.
President Bidenâs statement on Saturday washing his hands of Afghanistan deserves to go down as one of the most shameful in history by a Commander in Chief at such a moment of American retreat.
Worse is his attempt to blame his decisions on Mr. Trump: âWhen I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessorâŚâ
Note that Mr. Biden is more critical of his predecessor than he is of the Taliban. The President has spent seven months ostentatiously overturning one Trump policy after another on foreign and domestic policy. Yet he now claims Afghanistan policy is the one he could do nothing about.
Seen on the internet:
Biden sprinted away from the press after his speech like he was trying to catch a plane out of Kabul
Here is President Trumpâs statement
Can anyone even imagine taking out our Military before evacuating civilians and others who have been good to our Country and who should be allowed to seek refuge? In addition, these people left topflight and highly sophisticated equipment. Who can believe such incompetence? Under my Administration, all civilians and equipment would have been removed.
Youâd get more covid aid, $1k/month, if youâre a violent felon in NYC than a citizen under deBlasioâs latest âmaking crime payâ initiative.
If you are tasked with keeping a busload-size cohort of young men from getting arrested for a gun crime, and count it as a success when only a dozen or so get caught, maybe you need to Âreconsider your definition of achievement.
Bingo!!
Not all. But far too many people at the top of our government bureaucracies arrogantly place their personal preferences, well being, and advancement ahead of Americaâs best interests.
We saw this vividly under Trump. Now we are seeing it once again under Biden.
Trump at least understood the desperate need for a house cleaning . . . but he was not given time fully to accomplish it. Biden never will understand the need.
LEST WE FORGET
In 2014 Obama released FIVE Taliban leaders in trade for pothead traitor Bowe Bergdahl.
Obama contributed to Taliban strength
But it sadly was not just Obama:
Taliban Commander Gholam Ruhani was released from Guantanamo in 2007 by George W. Bush!! Ruhani fed his captors (that would be US) a cock and bull story which they believed and which led to his release. Now Ruhani sits among top Taliban Commanders at the winnersâ table in the Afghanistan Presidential Palace. He prevails. We lose, having paved the way to our own defeat!
With Presidents like Obama and Bush, what more help did the Taliban need?
Biden was just confused, and thought the CDCâs eviction ban applied over there as wellâŚ
Thereâs plenty of blame to go around when it comes to Afghanistan, but the claim that the Afghan forces were routed quickly by the Taliban and there was no point in us fighting for them if they werenât going to fight for themselves is over simplified.
While it was clear that the American people had little appetite to âstayâ in Afghanistan, the anti-war rhetoric was 10 years out of date. People forget that we had over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan at one point. Keeping 5% of that number there âindefinitelyâ hardly meets the definition of war. The reason that Afghan forces were routed so quickly is because of how much they depended on us as secondary support. The biggest difference between Afghan forces and the Taliban was air power. Imagine the one huge advantage you have over your enemy being almost immediately useless because, while you have pilots and planes, you depended on your buddies for fuel, maintenance, target acquisition, and intelligence - and your buddies just peace out before you can get those things handled yourself.
When Biden refused to listen to his military advisors to keep a small force there (including contractors that the Afghan army needed to function), and instead went with advice from his political handlers, he essentially pulled the rug out from under an army that wasnât able to stand on its own, not because it couldnât, but because it never had to before. Is that Bidenâs fault? No. But it is the reality and his advisors in the Pentagon told him that. Yet he went through with his withdrawal plans anyway. There are quite a few failures that led up to this point, but without Bidenâs final say to withdraw before it was safe to do so, we wouldnât have had the utter shit-show disaster we have seen over the past week.
Correct. Our Pentagon potentates set it up that way over many years in order that American involvement in Afghanistan would go on and on and on.
They certainly did. They also knew that both Trump AND Biden wanted OUT of Afghanistan. But they did NOT want out, and they bamboozled both presidents with their assertive arrogance and their belief that they run things, and NOT the elected representative of the American people.
Itâs OK to disagree with POTUS. But after he has made up his mind it is the responsibility of subordinates to do a workmanlike job carrying out HIS wishes. When subordinates continue, instead, to turn away from higher up decisions they do not favor, real trouble ensues. And that is where we are today.
Biden is paying the penalty for failure to buy into the Pentagonâs clear preference to continue involvement in Afghanistan. I have no doubt whatsoever they would have treated Trump the same way, had he been reelected.
They convinced Trump of the truth, which is why he continued negotiations and never forced a complete withdrawal. Trump ran on ending our involvement in Afghanistan too. He just had better handlers and advisors that kept him from doing something as stupid as Biden just did.
I am no apologist for Biden and I do not want to be seen as one here.
The Afghanistan decision process existed at two levels:
First, should we leave or should we remain and try to continue with the endless, rather hopeless, nation building? Both Trump and Biden wanted us out of Afghanistan. Right decision? Opinions on this vary.
Second, having decided to leave, how do we do so with as little embarrassment as possible? This is where Biden went astray because he is being so poorly served by his subordinates. Biden needed to crack the whip, something of which he might have been unaware at his age. But Iâm not sure Biden ever knew how to crack the whip. His record of ineptitude precedes him. There is such a thing as doing the right thing the wrong way. Biden is a very poor leader of our country on multiple fronts. But he sadly is the leader our people elected.
Finally, Republicans calling for Biden to be impeached over this debacle are insane. This is because no sane person wants Harris as POTUS. You think we have problems now . . . . . just you wait until her nibs is in the Oval Office. Is there worse still than Biden? You bet.
ETA
For the record I believe President Trump, had he won last November, would have left Afghanistan. Pompeo as much as said so on TV last weekend. But Trump would have done so in a far more workmanlike and far less embarrassing manner than Biden has done. Trump does know how to crack the whip.
Bidenâs efforts somehow to blame Trump for all this are ridiculous. Biden has been POTUS for almost seven months. During that time he (Biden) has sought successfully to reverse virtually every single one of Trumpâs decisions and policies. Bidenâs claim he was bound by Trump, presumably and apparently on this matter alone, is fallacious on its face. Such a claim reflects very poorly on Biden and on his qualification in the first place to be POTUS.
Next:
The people about whom to have concern now are the millions of free citizens of Taiwan. This Afghanistan debacle has sent a horrible message to communist China and doubtlessly will embolden them.
The Reds can see clearly that the current American leadership is inept. This is not good at all.
If weâre going to sit by and let Iran develop nukes against our national interest, which seems to be the current Biden policy, the least we can do is help with the tech for Taiwan. Thatâs what they need as a deterrent against China and getting taken over Hong Kong style, one way or the other.
Biden rearms Taliban with finest American rifles and ammunition
Whose side is Biden on?
Nobody knows for certain.
Reuters: Biden pleased to oblige Taliban need for rifle upgrade
Biden clearly believes âMade in USAâ really means something.
An alternate explanation is that President Trump was smart enough to listen to his advisers when they gave sound advice while that old fool Biden overruled his advisers.
That is a false choice. We were not there nation building for the past years. Instead we had troops to assist the afghans and contractors to maintain their airplanes and other high-tech equipment.
We have troops around the world doing the same things. Without American troops South Korea cannot defend itself. Same with Japan and Western Europe. Those are not nation building either.
With the support of our troops the Afghans have fought bravely. Look up the casualty figures.
Our soldiers were not fighting directly. I donât have time to look it up but I read that the last American casualty was over a year ago. So there is some danger but unfortunately that is part of being a soldier.
But that cant be - the popular narrative for the last 5 years has been the opposite! And that narrative is one of the biggest drivers of the still-obsessive Trump hate.