Afghanistan

[pondwater]

In contrast, the manner in which Trump "carried out" our exit from Afghanistan was beyond reproach: he left it to someone else.
I wouldn't say that Trump was "adamant" about doing a thing that we both agree he didn't do.  That's like saying Bush was "adamant" about privatizing Social Security or that Obama was "adamant" about closing GTMO.

Contrary to your radical agenda and extremist views. You could say Biden did something wrong without making it a trump v Biden thing. Trump is not in office anymore. Biden made the decisions and the buck stops with him.
 

Last I checked, Biden was still in the White House and his regime remains in control of our country.  Perhaps you believe the Taliban invasion is coming shortly?

You know that has absolutely nothing to do with what I said, you're deflecting again. You claimed:

that handguns and rifles are an incredibly ineffective way to fight against a government that has risen to the level of a nuclear power.

Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and other countries have disproven your point. Small arms have proven very effective against nuclear powers. Afghanistan in particular has defeated Russia and the US. And before nuclear technology, the British. You're just wrong.

I'll give the Taliban this, though: they did better than the Confederacy.  But I guess if you're the kind of person dedicated to cheering on American military defeats, you take what you can get.

Just stating facts. Sorry you are allergic to them. But then again, I really don't give a fuck

[pondwater]

This is an American military defeat the same way a guy loses a fight because he walked away after knocking some other guy out cold on the street. By all measurements the US military won this war in every possible way. And then we left because we'd been there long enough.

No, we're more like a boxer quitting in his corner between rounds late in the fight because he doesn't want to fight anymore. At that point you lose. Especially when we have to scramble to emergency exfil our own people and allies out before the TALIBAN gets their hands on them and starts the tortures and beheadings. The Taliban hasn't been knocked out by any stretch of a rational persons imagination.

Germany, Japan, and the Confederacy are examples of "wins". We beat them into submission and they didn't want to fight anymore. Make no mistake, we lost in Afghanistan. Just like we lost in Vietnam and Korea. We were beat into submission through time, money, and political pressure. Spin it how you want if it makes you sleep better at night.

[Dolphster]

I'm not going to say much about this because this topic is highly personal for me.  I deployed to the Sandbox quite a few times although most of them were to Iraq and not Afghanistan.  Lost several friends and saw far too many others die in front of me.  Anyways, all I'm going to say is that I give Biden a partial pass on this one.  Although he is handling it terribly, a complete pullout had to happen sooner or later and no matter who the sitting president was when it happened and no matter how it was done, it was going to be a complete shitshow and anyone who served in Afghanistan would have told you that the nanosecond we left, that void would be immediately filled by whichever murderous bunch of Islamo-loonies could intimidate the Afghan military (who were mostly cowards who never fought in the first place no matter what the spin doctors in the Pentagon and DC might have said) the fastest would take over within weeks.  Nothing other than a permanent large US military presence there forever (no thanks) was going to stop this from happening. 

When we first went boots on the ground there for anything longer than a 2 month scorched earth visit, I'm sure Putin was laughing his ass off and thinking, "Good luck to you dumbass Americans. Apparently you've never read history books about Afghanistan.  Did you really think it would go better for you than it did for us?"

[Spider-Dan]

Contrary to your radical agenda and extremist views. You could say Biden did something wrong without making it a trump v Biden thing. Trump is not in office anymore. Biden made the decisions and the buck stops with him.

How many times do I have to say "I agree with Biden's decision to pull out"?
You are apparently under the impression that I believe if only we had stayed there A Little While Longer the outcome would have been different.  From the moment we decided to invade Iraq without first pulling out of Afghanistan, this was always going to be the outcome.

I think it is worth mentioning that if Biden had not been Obama's VP, we would not have withdrawn.  But Biden was sitting there first hand for eight years of "We just need to train a few more Afghan troops" and "We need a few more months of building up the country."  The generals have been singing this song for two decades.  It was time to get out.

You know that has absolutely nothing to do with what I said, you're deflecting again. [...] Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and other countries have disproven your point. Small arms have proven very effective against nuclear powers. Afghanistan in particular has defeated Russia and the US. And before nuclear technology, the British.

The point YOU have been trying to make is that "small arms" can completely overthrow the government of a nuclear state and remove its leadership from power.  That is what YOU need to happen in order for nutjob 2nd Amendment whackos to have a chance: you have to completely overthrow the US government.

The Vietcong didn't do that.
The Taliban didn't do that.

You are trying to compare the US government losing interest in a foreign war halfway across the world to the US government abdicating power in its own seat of government.  This is like trying to cite "American colonists kicked the British out of the US" as evidence that "Actually, American colonists could have conquered Great Britain."

It's ridiculous.  Those two things are not remotely alike.

[pondwater]

How many times do I have to say "I agree with Biden's decision to pull out"?
You are apparently under the impression that I believe if only we had stayed there A Little While Longer the outcome would have been different.  From the moment we decided to invade Iraq without first pulling out of Afghanistan, this was always going to be the outcome.

I think it is worth mentioning that if Biden had not been Obama's VP, we would not have withdrawn.  But Biden was sitting there first hand for eight years of "We just need to train a few more Afghan troops" and "We need a few more months of building up the country."  The generals have been singing this song for two decades.  It was time to get out.

Again, it's not specifically about leaving Afghanistan. It's about how it was carried out. If I had to guess, most people support actually leaving Afghanistan, including me. However, anyone could predict that if you remove your soldiers before you evacuate civilians, you’d create a logistical disaster after an imminent takeover. This was predicted by many before it even happened and Biden's administration still went forward. I'm sure everyone here already know's that if this was Trump and the situation was reversed, your extreme hypocrisy would have arguing the exact opposite.

The point YOU have been trying to make is that "small arms" can completely overthrow the government of a nuclear state and remove its leadership from power.  That is what YOU need to happen in order for nutjob 2nd Amendment whackos to have a chance: you have to completely overthrow the US government.

The Vietcong didn't do that.
The Taliban didn't do that.

You are trying to compare the US government losing interest in a foreign war halfway across the world to the US government abdicating power in its own seat of government.  This is like trying to cite "American colonists kicked the British out of the US" as evidence that "Actually, American colonists could have conquered Great Britain."

It's ridiculous.  Those two things are not remotely alike.

No, the point I'm making is that you and your opinion are wrong. And you know you're wrong and are simply trying to spin attention away from your nonsense claim.

Just FYI, your specific claim was:

handguns and rifles are an incredibly ineffective way to fight against a government that has risen to the level of a nuclear power.

That is your claim and these are your words, not mine.

Were Afghanistan and Vietnam ineffective fighting against the United States? Yes or No?

The fact is that Afghanistan and Vietnam with their handguns, rifles, and small arms were very effective against a nuclear power. Multiple real world results have proven it over and over.

[Dave Gray]

I think it's disingenuous to stick this to any one individual politician.  It's more a symptom of general American military positioning in the world.  There is good an bad with that.

You can pin the rate of the withdrawl on Biden, but what can the guy do.  The military advisors thought the Afghans could hold ground longer than they did.  They were wrong.  To try to save people, we're keeping troops there to help evacuate.  What can you do?

I think the end result is the same.

I gave Trump a pass on this, too.  Check the tape.  I didn't know if it was the right call, but you have to leave at some point or else you essentially have to occupy a part of the world to maintain stability forever, it seemed.  This was kinda like pulling off a band-aid.  It was gonna hurt, no matter what.

And I don't even really know what lessons we learn from this.  You can't be isolationist.  You need to step in when you're attacked or when there is oppression preventing good in the world.  I guess we gotta be more careful about picking sides when it's two factions warring and they're both bad options.

[Spider-Dan]

I'm sure everyone here already know's that if this was Trump and the situation was reversed, your extreme hypocrisy would have arguing the exact opposite.

Please spare me your lecture about hypocrisy.  If Obama had met with the Taliban and arranged for America to leave Afghanistan 4 months into Trump's presidency, not only would you be blaming every single death in Afghanistan directly on Obama, you'd probably be calling for him to be arrested for treason.  I'm old enough to remember when 4 Americans died in Benghazi and Republicans investigated that for years.

As for my specific claim about rifles vs. nuclear powers: clinking through to the thread you linked will show that the discussion was about overthrowing the US federal government.  And you have no example of a nuclear power being overthrown by guerrillas with rifles.  Because there isn't one.

Once again: it is your claim that the federal government of these United States can be deposed by civilians with rifles and handguns.  The very idea is absurd.  That's why you keep making references to occupied countries: you apparently cannot understand the difference between ending a foreign occupation and overthrowing a domestic government.

Were Afghanistan and Vietnam ineffective fighting against the United States? Yes or No?

Yes.
This is like asking, "Was France ineffective at fighting Nazi Germany in World War II, YES OR NO?"  Sloppy questions get lazy answers.

The Taliban, in particular, already controlled Afghanistan at the outset of this war.  They lost 21 soldiers for every 1 American they killed... all just to get back to the starting point.  By your logic - the same logic you are using to defend the idea of handguns as a weapon against a nuclear state - if I break into your house, beat the hell out of you, kill your pets, throw you out, and use your home as a flophouse for twenty years, and then you eventually manage to kick me out and make me go back to my own perfectly intact home that you never even got near, it is YOU that has "defeated" ME.

Now, let's be clear: the United States did not accomplish all of its political and military goals in Afghanistan.  But that's not even remotely the same thing as "The Taliban won"... especially since we did kill Bin Laden, whom they went to war to protect.  The Taliban is, by any metric, worse off today than they were on September 10, 2001.  War is not zero-sum.

[Dave Gray]

Pond, I have trouble believing that you're having this conversation in good faith.  It's pretty clear that you're critical of Biden in a way that you wouldn't have been if these things had happened under a different administration.

I think it's fair to criticize someone...not sure if Biden is the one...for the miscalculation about how fast things would crumble.
But the fact that things did crumble -- that was surely going to happen once we decided to go in.

I went back and grave-dug my old threads about going into Afghanistan.  I was against it at the time, funny enough.  I don't hate it, in hindsight, but the one thing I really don't like is that there wasn't a defined goal.   We did beat back terrorists and we did eventually kill Bin Laden, but there's never a good exit strategy for this kind of stuff.

I guess the lesson here is that religion is poison, so far as governments that are run by them, and so long as that's what we're dealing with, you can't really have a good outcome with Western values.

[CF DolFan]

Pond, I have trouble believing that you're having this conversation in good faith.  It's pretty clear that you're critical of Biden in a way that you wouldn't have been if these things had happened under a different administration.

I honestly think this is a pretty out there opinion. Many Republicans trashed Trump when he started pulling out Troops. What is happening in Afganistan is ridiculously bad. there is nothing in Trump's presidency that even slightly compares. Trump was and is an arsehole but he didn't hand over a country and billions of dollars in weapons to one of the most evil groups alive today.

[Spider-Dan]

What is happening in Afganistan is ridiculously bad. there is nothing in Trump's presidency that even slightly compares.

Nothing that even slightly compares!

Why Trump Abandoned the Kurds, Explained

Looking forward to your pending complaints about Biden's "catastrophic increase of the national debt."  Totally unprecedented!

Trump was and is an arsehole but he didn't hand over a country and billions of dollars in weapons to one of the most evil groups alive today.

Trump literally made the deal!

Afghan conflict: US and Taliban sign deal to end 18-year war

The US and the Taliban have signed an "agreement for bringing peace" to Afghanistan after more than 18 years of conflict.

The US and Nato allies have agreed to withdraw all troops within 14 months if the militants uphold the deal.

President Trump said it had been a "long and hard journey" in Afghanistan. "It's time after all these years to bring our people back home," he said.

[Spider-Dan]

I almost missed this gem!

Many Republicans trashed Trump when he started pulling out Troops.

hahahahaha no

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Does Biden bear some responsibility?  Yes.  But not much.  About the same amount that of responsibility as Ford had for the fall of Saigon.  It happened on his watch, but mistakes made my his predecessors made the situation inevitable. 

[Phishfan]

There just never was going to be a good way to pull out but it had to be done. The real blame for bad decisions should go to all the administrations that didn't start the process sooner.

[Spider-Dan]

Yeah, it was going to happen sooner or later.  How many years have we been six months away from a self-sufficient Afghani government?

I think if any other candidate had won, we wouldn't have left.  As I mentioned before, Biden had already heard all the excuses and rationalizations.  And let's be honest, here: Biden has the leeway to take actions that a President Sanders, a President Warren, or a President Harris would not.  It's "Only Nixon could go to China" redux.

[Dolphster]

There just never was going to be a good way to pull out but it had to be done. The real blame for bad decisions should go to all the administrations that didn't start the process sooner.

That right there.  Exactly.  100%.   The void of our absence was going to be filled by the Taliban or some other variation of them no matter when we left.  It was inevitable.  Training the Iraqis was damn near impossible when I was in Iraq because they weren't very bright and they weren't very brave.  But training the Afghanis was 10 times worse. It was like trying to teach discipline and military techniques to 10,000 full on retarded 5 year olds.  You can try to teach a rock to swim for 20 years and spend a billion dollars on teaching that rock to swim.  But a rock isn't going to swim no matter how much money you spend or how long you spend training it.   What the Taliban lacks in high tech equipment and high level military tactics, they more than make up for in a religious fanaticism and devotion to their cause that made it impossible for us to completely eradicate them and that makes the Afghan military utterly useless against.  Nobody is more motivated than someone who is so dedicated to their particular deity that they would rather die than live and if they can take a few infidels with them, all the better.  9 virgins in heaven  can be pretty tempting to lunatics with the IQ of a turnip who have never had sex with anything on two legs.  We were guilty again for about the 1,000th time of being so naive and arrogant as to think that cultures that are the polar opposite of our own want nothing more than to be like us.  When the fact is, they want to be as far away from our culture as they can possibly be.   If you go back and read some of the writing of Bin Laden in the time leading up to 9/11 and in the months after 9/11, he makes it very clear that he knew that they could not militarily defeat the US.  That wasn't even his goal.  His goal, and again this is very well documented and clear in his own writings was to drag the US into a long, sustained stalemate that caused the US to dump tons of money into "war" and his end game was for this long, drawn out conflict to destroy the US financially.  He absolutely accomplished the majority of what he wanted.  He just underestimated the resiliency of the US economy and the power of the FED, etc. to prop up the economy during financial hardship.  Other than that miscalculation, Bin Laden far exceeded even his own hopes and expectations of what 9/11 would lead to.   His plan all along was for the US to invade Afghanistan.  Yes, that is what he wanted.  Again, this is not my opinion, this is his own writings.  His hope was that we would invade and that his followers would for the most part wait us out while hiding in the mountains of Tora Bora and caves.  Only coming out long enough to skirmish a little bit or slaughter some Afghan innocents so that we stuck around longer and longer.  His plan was to wait us out and then blitzkrieg the Afghan Army  once we left.  As I said, other than underestimating our financial resiliency, his plan worked better than he ever even dreamed that it would.