All the moaning about our withdrawal is nonsense partinship.
To be fair, I see plenty on the left (especially among some peers I talk to) who view this as a perfectly executed withdrawal and now all is right in the world, which I think is also a fairly partisan position. Make no mistake, I'm happy to see this chapter over but I'm not naïve enough to think the book is finished.
I'm not sure if it was talked about in the other thread but for me I find it difficult to discuss Afghanistan rationally among my peers because of how much emotional baggage it carries. After 9/11 I had many friends enlist and those in my similar age range saw so many friends hurt, or worse, in Afghanistan and Iraq... it makes it difficult to think about independent of that.
It also doesn't help that Bush & Co forever tied those countries and the generic "war on terror" together. I hear a lot of the animus towards our time in Iraq bleed into the Afghanistan discussion, rightly so on some counts but it also muddies the water on what a viable strategy could have been.
He/Him
"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation." -L.P. Jacks
What a lot of people aren’t understanding is that for America to have legitimacy on a planetary scale, current presidential administrations do well to uphold agreements made by prior ones.
[...]
Ah yes. That small issue of other people trusting the US as a reliable party to do deals with, or with whom to ally yourself. Funnily enough, that seems to play little or no role in the discussions we are having here: it is as if there are only two locations that matter - The Homeland, and Foreign Parts. Huge enough military spending is sufficient to protect the former and keep the alien and threatening denizens of the latter at bay. If US forces and US nationals got out of Afghanistan without major loss, all is just wonderful.
But it is not like that. In the real world, the safety and prosperity of the US depends on complex worldwide webs of alliance, trade, influence and trust. The sight of what has just happened in Afghanistan has hugely damaged the credibility of the US (and its allies) as people on whose side it is good (and safe) to be. "They invaded and took over our country, and for twenty years we were encouraged to make our lives on the basis that we would be safe living on a new basis. Suddenly they are gone, and now the Taliban are back and are looking for us so they can take their vengeance." Whether or not that is a just reproach does not matter much: the reputational damage has been done, and many people in many places will not feel like making commitments to a country that may decide that it has had enough and is going home. And America and its allies and friends will be less safe, and ultimately less prosperous as as result.
None of this pleases me in the slightest, but it needs saying.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Mayan Elephant:
Not only have I denounced the Big Lie, I have denounced the Big lie big lie.
I think there is one main item of genuine debate regarding the withdrawal. That being around the intelligence regarding the Afghan army and governments resolve once US support was pulled out of country. And with that, the reception of the intelligence by political leadership. This straddles both the Trump and Biden administrations.
By all accounts, the US straddled a line between offering to help people leave who wanted to while viewing a mass exodus as undermining the Afghan government right up to Ashraf Ghani abandoning the country. And I get that. I think the Biden administration at least believed that the support we were still giving and planned to give would allow the Afghan government to find its legs and, when push came to shove, maintain control of Kabul and large parts of the country. And ultimately they'd work something out with the Taliban. They appear to have been genuinely surprised by the rapid collapse of the government and total Taliban takeover.
But evacuations have to be seen in that light rather than as people ignoring calls to leave. That rush came as the situation became more fluid then boiled out of the pot.
I guess it's frustrating to see the Fox News types voicing criticism of Biden having left people behind and MSNBC types voicing an equally fictionalized narrative of promises made, promises kept.
It's why in the other thread I took up the idea that the Afghanistan withdrawal highlights our flaws as a nation as a whole as having become unserious, self-destructive, and faux-principled. Because we are, and that's not just a commentary on one side of the political spectrum.
It's why in the other thread I took up the idea that the Afghanistan withdrawal highlights our flaws as a nation as a whole as having become unserious, self-destructive, and faux-principled. Because we are, and that's not just a commentary on one side of the political spectrum.
Trillions of dollars, thousands of lives destroyed on both sides, and this is the hard truth of a bad decision and the subsequent sunk cost fallacy politicos undertook. Luckily for us, the rest of the world isn’t really any better because we’re all humans and this seems to be the default setting - our collective memories are short and we’ll move on to some other nonsense soon enough.
But it is not like that. In the real world, the safety and prosperity of the US depends on complex worldwide webs of alliance, trade, influence and trust. The sight of what has just happened in Afghanistan has hugely damaged the credibility of the US (and its allies) as people on whose side it is good (and safe) to be. "They invaded and took over our country, and for twenty years we were encouraged to make our lives on the basis that we would be safe living on a new basis. Suddenly they are gone, and now the Taliban are back and are looking for us so they can take their vengeance." Whether or not that is a just reproach does not matter much: the reputational damage has been done, and many people in many places will not feel like making commitments to a country that may decide that it has had enough and is going home. And America and its allies and friends will be less safe, and ultimately less prosperous as as result.
While this does a lot of damage, one of the ways we can mitigate some of the damage is to at least take those who helped the US and it's allies and allow them to leave with us. How we do here will say a lot to others in the future whether we will leave them to die.
