Unlike the Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Synod is very conservative theologically and about actual boots on the ground doing work.
I blame all four of them. Is there anyone on the left in this thread that's saying Biden isn't to blame?
Blaming W is more than deserving of the blame for getting us into this boondoggle. Whether we left in '06 or 2012 or on First Contact day this was the shit that was going to happen. That said, pissing and shitting does nothing for our allies we left there.
The media was entirely too compliant over the Iraq catastrophe. Afghanistan was different. At least whether there was justification for being there is debatable. I think the initial invasion was justified. The only thing that I can say might mitigate our Afghanistan adventure is the fact that a generation of Afghans (especially women) grew up knowing something about modern life. Hopefully it will make a difference.
It is just a short, in a relative sense, time until they evolve if we stop bombing them back into the stone ages. When they get some technology and start interracting with the world they will want more. That is when their true awakening will happen. This is why the religion in these countries fights like hell to keep technology out.
A massive Biden misstep with long lasting consequences - although no one can say he hasn't advertised his desire to get out. Like Rumsfeld, he viewed the invasion as pouring weedkiller over the area and getting out, and has repeatedly aired that over the last 20 years. It looks like the Taliban command are going to behave until they've sorted things out with the Chinese, their members not so much, so a scaled down horror show - at least until they've discussed with Beijing what their price is for them joining the other Islamic powers in throwing the Uighers under the bus. It's also a bit of history repeating itself, we'd propped up a regime that had turned to grift, which is precisely what got the Taliban in last time. They've been running a parallel, fairer, quicker, effective and more efficient judicial system than the official government had been for a while now. Which should be a source of absolute embarrassment to us. Had Biden been prepared to actually learn the lessons and do the hard work of fixing out litany of fuck ups, who knows? As it is, he's just handed over the Chinese their missing jigsaw piece for the area. In the US, the Democrats were already facing a struggle in 2024 if Trump came back for another shot, this may be the point where Trump's return is made inevitable. Yes, he started the ball rolling, but Trump's arrogance and ego does to reality what a black hole does to spacetime. He already neutralises the inbuilt advantage of the incumbent. Can also forget about battling climate change, this confirms a receding liberal-leaning, democracy-leaning West to an ascendent China, who've already ringfenced Africa and have started biting into Europe, along with making nations as diverse as Pakistan and New Zealand into effectively satellite nations, means that developing nations will keep to fossil fuels. If Trump returns too, well, there goes the US, so the biggest polluters will just keep on polluting. So yes, well done Joe, bit of a Franz Ferdinand moment there. edit: fat-fingered 'graft' instead of 'grift'
I blame Trump more than I blame Biden. He's the one with the deal with the Taliban that agreed to release 5000 fighters. And we made the deal to leave Afghanistan with the Taliban, NOT with the government of Afghanistan! Trump absolutely gave them legitimacy and a specific time table for leaving. And he constantly undercut his negotiators even in this limited fashion by unilaterally announcing troop withdrawals while negotations were going on. He made it clear to the Taliban we were leaving ASAP. Of course, not so quickly it would fall within his first term. Funny that. Biden continued with that program, which he shouldn't have, but it's absolutely amazing to me anyone would think this is primarily his fault. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/04/9736...nistan-leaves-biden-with-a-terrible-situation
Biden's the President - he's not necessarily bound to previous deals, as Trump made more than evident, and Biden has made it abundantly clear that he's willing to steamroll over Trump's decisions when in office. He has also repeatedly called for the US to leave, comments from Blinken and Holbrooke should leave no one in any doubt that on Afghanistan he was of a mind with Trump. Had Biden followed on from Obama, we'd have seen the same scenes, just sooner. Biden has had the grace to recognise the buck stops with him, the US may at least have a statesman at the helm, but he's a highly conservative one when it comes to military action - presumably as he's had skin in the game. That might have been a good thing at the start of the century, it's a bit more debatable now.
None of which alters one bit what I said. Trump emptied the prisons. Trump gave them legitimacy. Trump cut a deal with the Taliban, he didn't negotiate an exit with the Afghani government. I mean, can you imagine the response that caused among the Afghans? He treated the Taliban before they were in power as if they were the legitimate government. Hell, Trump's on camera saying he poisoned the well so much the next administration will have to leave. “I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process. Twenty-one years is enough, don’t we think? Twenty-one years. They [the Biden administration] couldn’t stop the process. They wanted to, but it was very tough to stop the process.” — Trump, at a political rally, June 26 And now of course he's giving speeches that this would have never happened with him in charge. Because Syria never happened on his watch, explicitly because of him. Trump's going to go down as the worst president of all time.
Trump oversaw an actual attempted insurrection at national level, which I think was the first insurrection on US soil since the removal of the Fusionists by white supremacists, so, yes, he was already Worst President. But in Afghanistan he did little different than what Biden had been advocating, the NYT even has an article on it. As for giving the Taliban legitimacy, they already had it - outside of cities like Kabul they'd developed a parallel system that rural Afghans had come to rely on. The Afghan legal system was a network of bribes, the police were frequently acting criminally and the various warlords were shuttling funds to themselves and their allies. The Taliban supplied a viable, less corrupt, alternative that the Afghans turned to. And in their actions over the last few weeks the Taliban have been in breach of the Doha agreements, what exactly has Biden done to punish them for that? You're just playing the well practiced game of blaming the last guy in charge - Trump may have started this, but Biden owns it.
Yes, Biden and Trump both wanted to extricate the US, but that's a very surface level analysis. Nothing in that article indicates Biden was pro cutting a deal with the Taliban without involving the Afghani government. Nothing in that article indicates Biden was willing to free 5000 Taliban unilaterally. Nothing in that article indicates Biden was willing to suspend sanctions on the Taliban before the US left, as Trump did. Nowhere did Biden invite the Taliban to Camp David. Nowhere did it indicate that Biden would unilaterally draw down US troops while negotiations were underway, cutting the legs out from under the negotiators. These two things aren't the same. And you'd have to be pretty damn dumb not to understand that.
Show me one pundit on the left who has absolved Obama and in particular Biden for their contributions to this situation. Pretty sure you won't be able to since the majority of the left pundits do not treat left or centrist politicians like god-kings and we tend to deal in reality to some extent. And the reality is that Biden made the decision to withdraw when and how he did, and he has to wear the jacket for that decision.
Quite true, but then it's an article, not an alternative history. We don't know exactly exactly what Biden would have done, but we know from his own words he had scant regard for how Afghanistan would be left. When told the US would be abandoning Afghan women, his response that Nixon and Kissinger got away with it in Vietnam informs us of which dogs he'd happily get fleas from in order to get the US out. You know, I get it, after 4 years of Trump building a tenth circle of hell, Biden was supposed a bit of a new dawn, and by and large he has been and I totally get the desire to absolve him in this case. I'm not going to do that, you feel free to do so.
The thing about Trump breaking with the policies/treaties of previous presidents is it represents a REALLY BAD idea. Part of the point of a treaty or policy is that the nation is agreeing to abide by it, period. If the next administration comes along and says I reject what my predecessor has done, it sows mistrust and calls into question whether you can trust any commitment the nation has made or will make. Vader can get away with "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further," because the Empire is zillions of times more powerful than Cloud City and doesn't have to care about what it or anyone thinks about how it conducts its business. Also, because it's evil. Good guys who are not able to make unilateral decisions can't and shouldn't operate that way. On the foreign policy front, I think most of the reversals Biden did were to restore the status quo before Trump (like rejoin the Paris Accords) and were meant to show that if America gives its word on something, it is going to stick with it.
Ah, so we are finally understanding that the last guy did indeed have quite a bit to do with it, and that Biden doesn't 'own it' as you stated. He is of course responsible for his actions, but not the actions that directly led to this situation. Biden's statement also includes we've been there 20 years trying to build a government capable of defending itself, and that the Afghan people have to want to defend it themselves. Clearly, as a whole they did not want to do so. They capitulated with incredible speed. Part of that is how Trump handled it, to be sure, but part of it is the fact they clearly haven't created a tenable alternative to Taliban rule, despite hundreds of billions of US dollars and a twenty year reprieve backed by NATO forces.
I agree on the breaking treaties bit being a bad idea, and also on Biden restoring the status quo on reversing some of Trumps decisions. He could have done that with Afghanistan too, no? Could have said that Trump's agreement went against Afghan and US interests, went against various promises and vows made towards the Afghan people, that it was void. He could even have waited until the Taliban breached the agreements and voided it, ensuring the US wasn't the party in breach. He didn't, the Doha agreements gave him the political fig leaf he needed to get out.
No, Biden owns it. He's the President, Biden himself has admitted the "buck stops with him", but again, absolving Biden seems important to your personal self esteem, so go for it. I'm agreeing you have the right to that view, I just disagree with it. If that upsets you, that's your issue, not mine and I'm done arguing a point we're not going to come to an agreement on. We - and it is a we, the UK royally fucked up in Helmand - have been trying to hammer a square peg in a round hole for 20 years. We've been trying to impose a centralised system on a nation whose geography, history and ethnic layout makes that completely inappropriate. We dealt with the warlords, but never kept their corruption in check, we ignored local customs and mores - one tale involved using workers from a neighbouring village which was seen as a slight to that village - we undercut ourselves. Bases were telling farmers they were not interested in their crops, days later another group under a different set of orders would burn the fields. Trust eroded. After 20 years our attempts at nation building looked like a toddlers attempt to paint The Last Supper. But, it was all the Afghans fault.
I've heard and read Biden's speech several times now and I ... kinda agree with him. The American people do not want our troops over there. American military doesn't deserve to be under constant mortal danger because the Afghans aren't willing to fight themselves. I don't know what to do to fix it, but ... it shouldn't be our job.
Technically, of course, Biden could have said/done anything from "we're just not withdrawing, period" to "unfortunately we need more time to safely withdraw." But the deal Trump made was to withdraw American troops by May of this year. There was no prior deal that Biden could cite to as a reason for scotching Trump's deal.
There were plenty of previous vows and promises, and Obama previously reneged on leaving there, and the Taliban breached the accords themselves. Plenty of wiggle room, just no desire to do any wiggling. Biden's just got his own flavour of America First, and Afghanistan didn't feature in that. Along with Nord Stream 2, it's quite clear he's happy to concede power in the European and Asian regions to Russia and China. Which should be interesting.
the problem is that Biden “mumbled” which gave the Trumpistas a great excuse not listen and dismiss anything in the speech.
This is an interesting side conversation. People are not absolving Biden, although he should probably shoulder the least blame of the last four Presidents. This is another example of the Two Americas. I can see conservatives in my feed right now proclaiming this never would have happened under Trump. People who were praising Trump’s deal with the Taliban are now all in on staying longer. Biden’s approach of just ripping off the Band-Aid might be the least worst option.
History determines who 'owns it', and that will very much end up on Trump's lap as the one that did by far the most to make sure this came to pass in such a profoundly troubling manner. Neither Biden nor you have anything to do with my self-esteem. If anything, your comments and general lack of understanding serve as a sterling example to increase it. You think the problem is centralization? Geez, I guess the Taliban will never be able to overwhelm the country then. None of this has to do with centralization - indeed, competing orders indicate the opposite. We clearly didn't understand the area well and tried to impose our standards and values. Just as clearly they rejected those. Westernization vs local traditions and religion. LOL. To state that the Afghanis rejected what we offered isn't to state it was either group's fault. It does state that they weren't willing to fight for those things, and so are getting what they wanted. Unfortunately, that includes the complete subjugation of their women. But then, that's what a lot of them were fighting for in the first place, and clearly, the rest of the men didn't see it worth continuing the fight.
The Taliban are trying to appear moderate and conciliatory at a press conference. "The youth who have grown up here, we do not want them to leave. They are our assets...Nobody is going to knock on their door and ask them who they have been working for." "I would like to assure the media that we are committed to the media within our cultural frameworks. Private media can continue to be free and independent." "We are going to allow women to work and study within out frameworks. Women are going to be very active within our society, within our framework." Those last three words are doing a lot of heavy lifting, I suspect.
Sounds like they got Paul Manafort to advise them. I'm sure this will least a month before the media wanders off and the executions begin in earnest.
I mentioned it as, both in this thread and the What If one, your first response was aggressively condescending and, now here, marvellously arrogant. Totally get it if we were mid-way through a humdinger of an argument, had a history of enmity, or I'd stuck my dick in your drink at a bar. Maybe you've just decided to a be a bit of a cunt online, which is fine, it's a part I've played often enough. If so, have fun, if not I hope whatever's crawled up your arse resolves itself to your benefit. Dig up a map of the ethno-linguist landscape of Afghanistan, and one of its landscape, then have a read of its history. Many of its regions have historically been part of differing empires, and even when as fully part of Afghanistan there's been a large degree of devolved power. You can't simply cut and paste the governing structure we did over it and expect it to work. I didn't say it did, these were examples of where we screwed up by not understanding the ground. As for competing orders, you can still get that in centralised structures. The UK bureaucracy, and frequently its governing party, highlights that readily enough. As for imposing our standards and values, to some extent. They were taken on board in the cities, less so rurally - rednecks are going to redneck, whether they fuck chickens in the US or goats in Afghanistan. You go into the French countryside and domestic abuse is still an issue. And some aspects - female equality - were welcomed, not least by the women. This belief that they're somehow inferior is silly, yes, you've got religious and cultural issues, but so did we not long back - took the second world war to get the concept of women in the workplace to start being taken seriously. In March someone pulled out all the contractors that were helping them, weakening every level of the Afghan government and security services. And over the last 20 years we've been responsible for building up their security services, yet did nothing about phantom troops (who got paid!), missing weapons and the general corruption that took up in the place. Stop trying to mitigate our role in all this. You kick someones crutches away, you don't get to moan when they can't walk well enough.
I am not well. I know this is hard for y’all to believe but when necessary I can be a charming person. As the Hearts and Minds guy on my SpecOps team I was the best in JSOTF-W (Joint Special Operations Task Force - West). I would record village imams doing the call to prayer and play that at the right time. So they would encourage folks to listen. I would also take mp3s from people so it was the most popular music in the district. I had call in music request shows where people could hear their voice on the radio and control at least a little thing (the next song) which was really big. And I had times when local officials would come on to talk about what they were doing and people could call in to them. The radio station I built became so important that it caused a mini-crisis when the 82nd chucklefucks broke the antenna moving it while I had gone back to see my Pawpaw before he died. The District Governor actually believed it was his radio station so was really angry when the coverage dropped (broken antenna). We had to rush another antenna from Qatar. Not trying to boast but I did a REALLY good job convincing folks to work with the Afghan government/US. By the metrics used (went from 33 Elders at the District Shura before I got there to over 350, and when asked how they heard about over 90% said radio) I was the best in my quadrant of the country. That was something I took pride in. And now that the Taliban is killing folks that worked with us it means I was the best at dooming folks to death. I wrote letters/did the paperwork to get my interpreter/radio DJ asylum 7 years ago and he is doing well in Germany. But there are so many others.
