POLL: Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo?

[goldmom]

Go on, tell me what a great job they did, then I'll bring some actual facts to the discussion.

You are clueless.

Well I’m not clueless as to the FACT that one hour into his Presidency Joe Biden signed a mountain of EO’s but interestingly enough none of them included a pause in withdrawal from A-stan.
I mean if there was such an obvious screw up surely Biden - with 50 years experience in DC - would have identified that in his transitional meetings and made sure there was a priority correction right?
Speaking of clueless…

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

 

[tarheelbybirth]

I mean if there was such an obvious screw up surely Biden - with 50 years experience in DC - would have identified that in his transitional meetings and made sure there was a priority correction right?
Speaking of clueless…

You mean like delaying the withdrawal for, like. four months or something? Your buddy, Trump, declared that was a mistake and we should get out on his early timeline. Think that would have gone better?

 

[Rifler]

Delaying the withdrawal well into fighting season was a serious mistake,.. Equally stupid was giving up Bagram in favor of doing the exit from Kabul,.. Biden was primarily concerned about how he could play the optics of a withdrawal.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

[1] Delaying the withdrawal well into fighting season was a serious mistake,..

[2] Equally stupid was giving up Bagram in favor of doing the exit from Kabul,..

[3] Biden was primarily concerned about how he could play the optics of a withdrawal.

[1] Please explain. We had already abandoned most of the countryside and we had agreements with the Taliban about Kabul, which they mostly lived up to.

[2] I agree. That's on Trump, but you could argue that Biden should have revised that part of the agreement. Then again, what difference would it have made - unless maybe we might have used Bagram as an extra staging area for evacuations? I haven't seen that suggested.

[3] Do you have any basis for that claim? In fact, what exactly are you claiming?

 

[Rifler]

1. Leave outside of fighting season and the Taliban has no viable presence.
2. Not on Trump. Kabul was selected by the Biden administration over recommendations from military advisors. Bagram was a defendable military base, and the obvious location from which to coordinate a departure.
3. Eyes, ears and common sense. Biden phucked up this event severely.

 

[RileyHawk]

Well I’m not clueless as to the FACT that one hour into his Presidency Joe Biden signed a mountain of EO’s but interestingly enough none of them included a pause in withdrawal from A-stan.
I mean if there was such an obvious screw up surely Biden - with 50 years experience in DC - would have identified that in his transitional meetings and made sure there was a priority correction right?
Speaking of clueless…

You're not smart.

President Joe Biden paused the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan early in his presidency to review the situation. When Biden took office in January 2021, he inherited an agreement from the Trump administration with the Taliban that set a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal by May 1, 2021.

After reviewing the agreement and the situation on the ground, Biden delayed the full withdrawal to August 31, 2021.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

2. Not on Trump. Kabul was selected by the Biden administration over recommendations from military advisors. Bagram was a defendable military base, and the obvious location from which to coordinate a departure.

Pretty sure the early departure from Bagram was part of the Trump agreement.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

1. Leave outside of fighting season and the Taliban has no viable presence.

How do you figure that?

The Pentagon and CIA said it would take the Taliban 6 months after we left. Big mistake. That's where the blame rests.

I want to know what Biden has done - and what Trump and Harris plan to do - to avoid more such failures.

I'm guessing it's on par with what we've done or plan to do to prevent the next pandemic and address climate change - meaning not nearly enough.

There is a party that cares about those things, and is also anti-war. But we aren't allowed to consider voting for them.

 

[tarheelbybirth]

Delaying the withdrawal well into fighting season was a serious mistake,.. Equally stupid was giving up Bagram in favor of doing the exit from Kabul,.. Biden was primarily concerned about how he could play the optics of a withdrawal.

Bagram is 40 miles outside of Kabul, with one highway access. Nearly 125,000 non-combatants were evacuated in the last two weeks of August. Getting them to Kabul and out was far, far easier than getting to Bagram. According to Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, “Well, in order to hold Bagram, we might have needed to probably push in 5,000 more troops on the ground. So that would have been a significant decision to hold Bagram, and we were under the direction to go to zero." After August 31, those troops would have been targets - the Taliban made it clear that they would not extend their cease-fire against American troops past that day.

So - here's your choice - recommit troops to Afghanistan to hold an isolated airbase that really serves no US purpose and will serve to draw Taliban attacks on US forces but might...might...prop up the Afghan military for a little while longer or GTFO after 20+ years. What's your decision?

 

[Rifler]

You commit the troops necessary to depart from a defendable military position, and you do it a time least favorable to your opponent,... Not during fighting season.

 

[What Would Jesus Do?]

You commit the troops necessary to depart from a defendable military position, and you do it a time least favorable to your opponent,... Not during fighting season.

You're really hung up on this "fighting season" meme, but you haven't explained how it matters for the withdrawal.