Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

In my day, never was longer.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Why Can’t Leaving A Twenty-Year War Be Easy?

Why Can’t Leaving A Twenty-Year War Be Easy?

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… I covered the fall of the Taliban for NPR, making my way into their former capital, Kandahar, in December 2001, a few days after the collapse of their regime. Descending the last great hill into the desert city, I saw a dusty ghost town. Pickup trucks with rocket-launchers strapped to the struts patrolled the streets. People pulled on my militia friends’ sleeves, telling them where to find a Taliban weapons cache, or a last hold-out. But most remained indoors.

It was Ramadan. A few days later, at the holiday ending the month-long fast, the pent-up joy erupted. Kites took to the air. Horsemen on gorgeous, caparisoned chargers tore across a dusty common in sprint after sprint, with a festive audience cheering them on. This was Kandahar, the Taliban heartland. There was no panicked rush for the airport.

I reported for a month or so, then passed off to Steve Inskeep, now Morning Edition host. Within another couple of months, I was back, not as a reporter this time, but to try actually to do something. I stayed for a decade. I ran two non-profits in Kandahar, living in an ordinary house and speaking Pashtu, and eventually went to work for two commanders of the international troops, and then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (You can read about that time, and its lessons, in my first two books, The Punishment of Virtue and Thieves of State.)

From that standpoint — speaking as an American, as an adoptive Kandahari, and as a former senior U.S. government official — here are the key factors I see in today’s climax of a two-decade long fiasco…

Self-Delusion. How many times did you read stories about the Afghan security forces’ steady progress? How often, over the past two decades, did you hear some U.S. official proclaim that the Taliban’s eye-catching attacks in urban settings were signs of their “desperation” and their “inability to control territory?” How many heart-warming accounts did you hear about all the good we were doing, especially for women and girls?

Who were we deluding? Ourselves?

What else are we deluding ourselves about?…

… This is what losing a war looks like. The decision to end a “forever war” meant we inevitably could not rescue everyone, including all the women and girls of Afghanistan. If we wanted to avoid the chaos and misery, including the plight of those women and girls, we should have stayed; but of course, Americans didn’t want that, either (though many speculated we could construct an ongoing, small and low-risk contingent of U.S. forces in the country).

But the story that the media resisted telling was less visible and far more positive — inspiring, even. It was the story of men and women running into the fray to save as many as possible from death and misery that a lost war entails…

By midweek, thousands of people — mostly non-Americans — were flying out of Kabul’s airport in what is fast becoming one of the most challenging airlifts ever attempted. State Department workers at the airport, in concert with colleagues back home and around the world, were forced to use every ounce of experience, creativity and ingenuity to handle a once-in-a-career emergency for the sake of Americans and thousands of Afghans. The accusation that we did not care about the latter is a grotesque insult to those who risked their lives to deliver Afghans to safety. By Friday, we had evacuated 13,000 people, mostly Afghans since the airlift began. By Saturday the number was up to 17,000. (The story of how the Trump administration decimated the visa system to rescue Afghans is now coming to light.)…

None of this negates the responsibility of higher-ups for the failures, large and small, of judgment and strategy. They must be held accountable for 20 years of a largely fruitless war and the decision not to bulk up forces and push out our deadline (putting our troops at greater risk) to minimize inevitable suffering. (The intelligence community’s inability to anticipate the speed of the Afghan government’s collapse may rank among its worst failures, along with the conviction that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.)

But the work of Americans charged with executing the evacuation is noble, selfless and deeply patriotic. Often reviled by an ignorant public, smeared as the “deep state” by right-wing conspiracy theorists and ignored by an arrogant media, these public servants saved untold lives and alleviated a good deal of human suffering last week…

Reader Interactions

82Comments

  1. 1.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    If we wanted to avoid the chaos and misery, including the plight of those women and girls, we should have stayed; but of course, Americans didn’t want that, either (though many speculated we could construct an ongoing, small and low-risk contingent of U.S. forces in the country).

    And how many of our children’s lives, health and sanity do we sacrifice to this noble goal Rubin? I suppose young men are just so much chaff to be burned in some quarters (heck going by what my friend who does PTSD group therapy for the VA says, apparently even these guy’s parents agree on that) but there are a lot of women in the military too.

  2. 2.

    James E Powell

    When has anyone in the US military been held accountable for lying?

    When has anyone in the “intelligence community” been held accountable for their failures?

  4. 4.

    BGinCHI

    It’s become kind of a joke to point to something and say “this is why we got Trump,” but goddamn it, this is one of the ways we got that lying, corrupt, racist shitbird as President.

    This whole phenomenon is a Master Class in American self-delusion, Empire, violence, and lack of critical thinking, paralleled closely by the unvaccinated zombie horde.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I wonder if all this new-found concern for women and girls by Biden’s enemies will get more white suburban women voters to take the domestic threat to women and girls seriously.

    Reproductive rights are on tap at the Supreme Court as we speak.

  6. 6.

    natem

    Neo-Cons in 2002: “This is not going to be another Vietnam!”

    Neo-Cons in 2021: “Look at Kabul! This is just like Vietnam!”

  8. 8.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @zhena gogolia: Yes, exactly, those people on the otherside are deadly serious. The American military’s firepower is quite formidable, the people who are willing to go against that aren’t a bunch of posers prancing around in an abandoned KMart parking lot.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    This is when war in Afghanistan went south.

    The search is underway for those who were behind these evil acts. I have directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

  11. 11.

    rikyrah

    They didn’t think that the Afghan Army wouldn’t fight at all.

    I think THAT is the only shocking thing.

    I think we thought that we would have a couple of months to get people out.

    Not, them not firing a shot, and giving in.

     

    It’s the phucking LACK OF CONTEXT that gets to me.

    1. Not pointing out that the new leader of the Taliban is someone DOLT45 had released from prison.
    2.  That Dolt45 released 5,000 Taliban from prison
    3. The Pompeo meeting after the election
    4. The fact that that muthaphucka Miller pretty much DESTROYED the visa process the last 4 years, and that there is was a SEVENTEEN THOUSAND APPLICATION BACKLOG when 46 and his Administration came in.

    I could go on and on about CONTEXT.

    I have appreciated that the Twitter Detective Agency has pulled all the receipts on these muthaphuckas in the MSM and how much time they paid to Afghanistan before this.

    Totally impressed with the pulling of commercial airliners into our rescue process.

  12. 12.

    rikyrah

    also, please note,

    what also pisses me off is that if were Dolt45…

    First of all, he wouldn’t have given two shyts about helping the Afghanis who had helped us – see the KURDS for how he felt.

     

    And, the MSM wouldn’t be saying SHYT about how many are being left behind.

  13. 13.

    Ken

    Sarah Chayes speaks Pashtu, lives in Kandahar, and advised military leaders & Joint Chiefs of Staff

    But does she have a picture of Al Qaeda leaders in her office? I don’t think you can really take anyone seriously if they don’t.

  14. 14.

    Another Scott

    A gentleman/gentlewoman and a scholar here pointed us to Sarah Chayes’ blog a few days ago. I just read it this morning. It’s a very good piece and well worth a click over.

    Folks over there have been dealing with invasions and wars from neighboring and not-so-neighboring tribes and empires for thousands of years. It’s in their (metaphysical) DNA. We were naïve in thinking that we really could impose our systems on them from afar without really working hard at it.

    [eta:] One thing she doesn’t mention – IIRC, and I think I do, W’s people told Pakistan in mid-late September 2001 that the US would go to war with them if they interfered with US operations in Afghanistan.  And apparently thought that that bluster was all that was needed…  Maybe it worked for a few weeks, but it certainly didn’t after that.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    Richard Perle, NYT Opinion, Dec. 2001.

    The U.S. Must Strike at Saddam Hussein

     

    By Richard Perle

     

    Dec. 28, 2001

    Within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush said, ”We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” From that first statement, Mr. Bush shaped a grand strategy for the war on terrorism that is as transforming of American policy as was Ronald Reagan’s pledge to consign an ”evil empire” to the ”ash heap of history.” It breaks with the past by taking aim at states harboring terrorists as well as at terrorists themselves. It is why we have destroyed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan even as we hunt down Osama bin Laden himself. It is why the war against terrorism cannot be won if Saddam Hussein continues to rule Iraq.

  20. 20.

    trollhattan

    @rikyrah:

    Tell it.

    Read yesterday that leading Republican candidate for CA governor and all around great guy, Larry Elder, mentored Stephen Miller. Make of that what you will.

  21. 21.

    Fair Economist

    @rikyrah: Well said.

    I’d particularly like to point out – why would the Afghan Army fight after Trump promised all Talibani prisoners would be released? Of course they didn’t fight! Trump had said they’d not be allowed to win.

  23. 23.

    germy

    For 20 years, politicians, elites and military leaders lied to us about Afghanistan. I know because I was there.

    Instead of spending $6.4 trillion to “nation build” in the Middle East, we should start nation building here. Read my @KCStar op-ed on this: https://t.co/Xjcwkj548B

    — Lucas Kunce (@LucasKunceMO) August 23, 2021

  25. 25.

    Another Scott

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yup.

    Repost – Ian Fritze at TheAtlantic via GovExec:

    What I Learned While Eavesdropping on the Taliban

    I spent 600 hours listening in on the people who now run Afghanistan. It wasn’t until the end of my tour that I understood what they were telling me.

    It’s well worth a click over for a small picture of what the war was really like. But Caution – some parts are disturbing.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  26. 26.

    Hoodie

    The point Rubin makes is particularly interesting.  For all the flag-waving, support the troops crap these folks put out, not too much glowing coverage of the men and women carrying out a heroic evacuation.   Maybe that’s because those folks are too busy doing good and don’t have time to waste on reporters, but I can’t help thinking the media is stuck in their own loop, like an obsessive fan rehashing the fourth quarter game plan after the clock runs out when the war was over in the first half, if not the first quarter.  Everyone else is heading to the parking lot and thinking about life after the game.

  27. 27.

    brendancalling

    I realize I’ve said this before, but Jennifer Rubin—once the shillingest right wing shill to shlll—seems to be the only columnist to consistently get Biden. For the time being at least, she has really turned around

  31. 31.

    BGinCHI

    @Benw: ​
      Doing great! A very good kind of busy, working and trying to cope with Interesting Times.

    Hope you’re well too.

  33. 33.

    BGinCHI

    Just want to remark that the only ad I get while on here is about Hot Honey Chicken, and I honestly don’t understand how ads know my nickname.

  34. 34.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah: The media bigwigs like Peter Baker and his wife Susan who writes for the New Yorker didn’t even care this much when the Orange Clown enacted his Muslim ban and Green Card Holders were stranded at various airports across the country.

  36. 36.

    Ten Bears

    Could have been worse – the Brits were massacred, their women and children assimilated …

    And in the mean times there’s a whole bunch of really important stuff going on that no one is paying attention to (ok, very few). It’s almost as if Afghanistan were the only thing going on in the world.

  37. 37.

    piratedan

    @schrodingers_cat: yeah, pretty much have already placed Baker and Glasser on the “do not bother with” list, bad faith actors with conistently crappy “hot takes” who end up doing a lot of narrative setting positions that are simply stupid.  Primary examples of the “only Dems have agency” crowd who wave off any criticism of GOP as if they’re allowed to be reprehensible bastards as if that has to be an acceptable given.

  38. 38.

    Cacti

    @Ten Bears: 5,000 Americans died from Covid last week.  500 died from gun violence.  0 died in Afghanistan.

    Guess which one the war industry press is hyperventilating about?

  39. 39.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Baud: My impression is “what about the women?” is the line from the Chicken Hawks who are hardly progressives.  Basically to put pressure on Biden with his suburban female voter base.

  40. 40.

    Brantl

    And all this shit can be laid back at GW Douche’s door, and no one will do that. He set up crooked people to both sell and execute BOTH wars, and they did it in as crooked a manner as they could get away with. I don’t know who thought either war wouldn’t end in tears. And frankly, both really have. If they had pursued either of these endeavors honestly, the best that they could have hoped for was a draw, like the South Korean situation, at the absolute best, and that wasn’t likely. (Wel, actually, it was Cheney, the invisible hand up Douche’s ass, but that’s not very different.)

  41. 41.

    Kay

    They’re so bad:

    The Biden brand is shot.
    It rested on three main props: straight talking, competence, and empathy. They supposed to be supported by his deep foreign policy experience and understanding America’s true allies.
    All those have been torched by his Afghanistan exit fiasco.
    Perhaps most disturbing of all is the absence of empathy as he’s been dissembling over his responsibility for what appears to be an inevitable and unforgivable failure to save many thousands of Afghans who risked their lives to support our military.

    Again I’m struck by these peoples insane belief that Afghans “risked their lives to support our military”

    This isn’t even correct in terms of the story they told the public for 20 years. The story they told the public had the Afghans risking their lives for their own country, which, by the way, is Afghanistan, not the United States.
    I always assumed they were risking their lives for their own country and not mine, but then I gave them agency and autonomy and didn’t assume their motives and inspiration wwere exactly the same as ours.

    They’re ridiculous. Twenty years later they don’t even have the basic, stated objective right.

  42. 42.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Brantl: Iraq was so popular with Cheny because he got such a sweet deal when he was out of government with Saudis during the Clinton Administration. Basically, Iraq was supposed to be the ultimate Wingnut welfare state were out of government GOPers got lush consultant and lobbyist jobs while their corporate donors got endless contracts from the Iraqi puppet state. Too bad from then the locals disagreed.

  43. 43.

    Anonymous At Work

    Question:
    To where is everyone being airlifted? I mean that in the short term.
    (Long-term, I’m hoping Texas (Gohmert’s district, please?!) and Arizona (Gosar’s district) and in an expanding circle from wherever Steve King is hiding.)

  44. 44.

    mrmoshpotato

    Obviously everyone would prefer an indefinite extension of the situation where we had a deal with the Taliban so no Americans got killed and also the Taliban didn’t take Kabul.

     

    And the press has done a really good job of obscuring from people why that’s not possible.

    Not sure what Upchuck Toddler had blathered about Afghanistan, but I definitely think he should enlist.

  46. 46.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kay: They’re ridiculous. Twenty years later they don’t even have the basic, stated objective right.

    They so upset they are accidently telling the truth. The whole point of the war was to have the war.

  47. 47.

    Kay

    What about the Afghans who were working not for the military but for journalists or people writing books about Afghanistan or private contractors? Were they risking their lives for the contractor who employed them? Or for something else? Could it be…Afghanistan?

    Even on simple things, they are incapable of describing this honestly. I still think they should come in as refugees! I HOPE they were fighting for Afghanistan. I feel really bad for them if they were fighting for the person writing a book.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    It’s a better story! It’s better than the one they came up with. It at least has them fighting for the nation we were building instead of fighting for the United States, which is completely incoherent and also weirdly disrespectful.

    It wasn’t YOU, dummy. It was THEM.

  49. 49.

    Brachiator

    What’s happening is that leaving is popular, but it’s unpopular with natsec elites and their allies in the media.

    Natsec elites? Is there also a natsec working class?

    I don’t understand the sources of all this nonsense, but I bristle when mysterious elites are invoked.

    But I acknowledge that some CNN pundits and others are working the shit out of a phony crisis of the Biden presidency narrative.

    Their most recent attack boils down to: The press is mystified that a president keeps his word, does what he said he would do.

  51. 51.

    mrmoshpotato

    Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.

    I must’ve missed the news of an invasion force being fought off in September 2001.

    Go fuck yourself, Shrub.

  52. 52.

    Timurid

    This is legitimately scary.

    The MSM appears to be completely done with Biden in the same way they were done with Trump after 1/6, after four years of insanity topped by an insurrection.

    Regardless of how much of this is actually Biden’s fault or how much the general public cares about Afghanistan, this intensity and unanimity of negativity from the media is going to move popular opinion. (See also, Fox News… but this can’t be fixed by changing the channel).

    He’s in big trouble.

    To be fair to Biden, he had no way of avoiding this. Canceling the drawdown and getting into a big fight with the Taliban would have gotten him the same treatment. All the talk about how the media are secret warmongers, slaves to the Blob or just people who care deeply about their old Afghan translators (who they haven’t talked to in over a decade) is over-analysis. All the media wants is President DeSantis. If some miracle had spared Afghanistan, it would all be about the Delta surge and how it’s 150% Biden’s fault. Of course once the evacuation is over they’ll pivot to the ‘Biden Pandemic’ quickly enough. Followed by deep thoughts about how savvy Democrats in Congress should distance themselves from the President and his reckless stimulus…

  53. 53.

    Elizabelle

    @Timurid:   I doubt very much that Biden is “in big trouble.”

    Take a deep breath, and ignore the news for a day or two.  I’m serious.

    Who might be in deep trouble is the major media, who are now proved to have been sucking their own fumes for decades.  They have been captured by the Serious People they profess to cover, skeptically.

    I think Biden is going to be just fine.

  55. 55.

    rikyrah

    @Timurid:

    Regardless of how much of this is actually Biden’s fault or how much the general public cares about Afghanistan, this intensity and unanimity of negativity from the media is going to move popular opinion.

     

    Nicole Wallace said last week after 46 did his first speech on Afghanistan

    ” 95% of the American people will agree with President Biden.

    And 95% of the media covering it will disagree.”

     

    That is where we are.  Period.

  56. 56.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Elizabelle:

    Who might be in deep trouble is the major media, who are now proved to have been sucking their own fumes for decades. 

    And sucking warmongers’ asses.

  57. 57.

    Elizabelle

    @Biff Baxter:   Have to take your word for it.  I have not watched MSNBC for weeks now.  No broadcast news.  (Still have to watch that Lawrence O’Donnell clip from last week, though.)

    It’s clear enough from pencil press — the newspapers — that the media is hyperventilating.

    Missed President Biden’s speech yesterday.  Should cue that up, too.

    I prefer listening to the source, and not what these drama llamas present as the narrative.

  58. 58.

    Subsole

     

     

    @rikyrah: This has nada to do with Afghanistan.

    This is a beltway press that just flat resents Democrats – electeds, voters, all of us.

    That’s the indelible impression I have after this week. They genuinely resent that we exist. Just look at the lip-curled scorn they give us compared to people who actually tried to murder them.

    We took their race-baiting, gay-bashing, immigrant-hating, grievance-pimping little toddler-god away from them. We took their shiny little war away. We took all that profitable chaos away. And they hate us all for it. That’s why we’re seeing such snotty, pissy behavior from them.

    We defend oursrlces from the people who abuse us. And the media screams at us for it, on the rare occasion they don’t just ignore the abuse altogether.

    I guess because they think we deserve it.

  59. 59.

    Elizabelle

    @mrmoshpotato:   Adam had a good observation about how incestuous the journalists/think tanks/national security types are.

    Maybe we could suggest they all take a fresh gander at “The Best and the Brightest.”

    And Ike would be laughing at them. Perspective, drama llamas.

  61. 61.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    Didn’t we hear this “yes, but I don’t like the way” bs during the creation of Obamacare too? Yes, yes, we sure did. Same old, same old. Time to move on from the naysayers. Again.

  63. 63.

    Subsole

    @Elizabelle:

    This. Though I do see what Timurid is saying. The media have pledged their allegiance. And it’s to the guys in Butternut, not Blue. Not good.

    My question is, how did the MEDIA get caught so flat-footed over this? Like, I expect the CIA to shine me on. I do not expect an industry that is loudly and perpetually proud of its cyncical, savvy, discerning nature to swallow the shine.

    Like, NONE of you talked to an Afghan poiceman these last 20 years? NONE of you ever had a conversation with someone who mentioned their army wasn’t getting paid? How TF does THAT happen?

    As bad as everyone else looks here, the media looks infinitely worse, because it is their JOB to know when no one else does, and they didn’t.

     

    Or.

     

    They DID know, and said nothing because they were afraid Jarvanka wouldn’t take their calls anymore.

    Which, y’know, would make them EVIL instead of merely incompetent.

     

    Wish Democrats would start firing THAT back at ’em…

  64. 64.

    Eunicecycle

    @Subsole: or they did know, and were waiting to include it in their upcoming books.

    Grr. It still pisses me off how much these “journalists” didn’t report on TFG because they were saving stuff for their books.

  66. 66.

    Elizabelle

    @Eunicecycle:   Yes.  That needs to stop.  No buying buckrakers’ books, when the news could have been relevant if it was reported earlier.

    I think as consumers we could do something about that.  I really do.

  67. 67.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Timurid: Do keep in mind that even the Media couldn’t be bothered about Afghanistan until last week. A month from now it will be the forgotten war again.

  68. 68.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Elizabelle: And Ike would be laughing at them. Perspective, drama llamas.

    That’s part of the rage from the Media, On twitter they are being mocked to their faces about this from both political sides.

  69. 69.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Subsole: It’s not quite that, they look down on us as hippies just as much as they look down on the MAGA as white trash. Their whole identity is They are the Elite of America, they know better, they don’t make mistakes and the rest of us should just shut up and listen to them. Instead their wise pronouncements are being torn to shreds by very well spoken people who are making very hard to refute, articulate arguments and that’s what’s driving them nuts.

    With Trump they could dismiss him as a light weight, Trump was cute, like a small marking dog in their minds, Biden earns particular animus from them because Biden is really good at dragging the flaw in their argument out in public and this something these people just hate with a passion; to be shown up as just as dumb as everyone else. Worse yet Biden has been part of the Washington scene since the 70s, he is supposed to be one them. Biden to them is a class traitor.

  70. 70.

    Splitting Image

    Supposedly an investigation of the “debacle” is in the works. If they investigate the entire period of the war, and they should, I suspect they will find two things to be true:
    1) The vast majority of the money allocated to Afghanistan (I’ve heard $1 trillion) never left the U.S. and made its way into the pockets of GOP-allied contractors, and
    2) This information was available to many of the media outlets currently railing on Biden for years, and them quashing the story is why Afghanistan was so little in the news these past five years.
    Honestly, the TV networks and the FTF aren’t covering like this with their usual “both sides are bad but the Democrats are worse” attitude. They’re covering it like they’re up to their necks in shit and desperate to throw the blame somewhere else.

  71. 71.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Biff Baxter:  I think the “there just isn’t much drama” is a big thing here.

    This might change, but right now there’s just… not a lot of dramatic video. No Americans are dying. We’re getting our allies out. The state itself fell apart, but that’s pretty easy to just say “Well, I guess Biden was right about that.” Biden WILL take a hit from this, because he was in charge when the 20-year-lie was exposed. But I don’t think that it will change things in a major way, except that the media has now convinced itself that he’s not good at his job.

    If in a week or two we still don’t have casualties I would expect this to die down, but the media will ensure Biden doesn’t take a victory lap on it. And if we get even a couple of soldiers killed, I imagine they’ll be howling.

    So I guess what we’re dealing with is the media/republican meme of “biden lost afghanistan” but most people won’t care. At worst, they’ll be beating on him for months about it.

  72. 72.

    Captain C

    @Subsole:

    I do not expect an industry that is loudly and perpetually proud of its cyncical, savvy, discerning nature to swallow the shine.

    I think they’re more concerned with telling themselves that they’re more cynical and savvy than everyone else, and telling themselves that everyone believes it, rather than actually being cynical, savvy, or even reasonably clueful.

  74. 74.

    Kathleen

    @Subsole: You nailed it. I also think the media hate us (Democrats, particularly the Clintons, Bidens and Obamas) because they hate the fact that Black people and women wield so much influence and power. Think of how they routinely ignore and dismiss Black voters. Racism fuels this frenzied hysterical hatred that we’ve seen so many times over the years. Plus misogyny. They hate powerful women like Pelosi, Clinton and Abrams too.

  75. 75.

    Ruckus

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Don’t make the situation worse!

    toddler would make the worst recruit. OK second worst.

    SFB didn’t get out because of whatever lame excuse his lawyer came up with, bone spurs or some such bullshit, he got out because everyone knew he’d be fuck up #1. It usually takes at least a week to maybe the end of week 2 to be 100% sure of who is a fuck up, but one look and it wouldn’t have been longer than 3 minutes on the first day that everyone on the recruit base would know. toddler would take to the end of day one.

  77. 77.

    J R in WV

    @Timurid: ​

    @Elizabelle: ​
     

    I agree with you, Elizabelle. Biden is doing what the vast majority of this nation wants done… out of that land war in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, the high ridges of Afghanistan.

    We should have gotten out of there immediately after nailing bin Laden and dropping him into the deep blue sea. And that should have happened within a couple of months after we had taken control of Afghanistan. If the Pakistanis were willing to hide bin Laden, they should have been willing to take the heat that goes with that role.

    I think the evacuation of refugees is going well. I hope we’re able to recover everyone who worked for us and would be vulnerable to the Taliban terrorists. I wish we could remove all the women from Afghanistan, young and old. Let those bastgards see how to run a nation with no one but young men. That won’t happen, unfortunately.

    I’m not surprised by the wailing of the MSM, they’re losing a story they’ve covered for 20 years. It was easy and cheap, and provided good video for their shows. And they got to play like they were war correspondent heros, body armor, helmets, bodyguards. It was glorious for them.

    Fuck that shit — and Fuck those bastards!

  78. 78.

    Ken

    @J R in WV: I’m not surprised by the wailing of the MSM, they’re losing a story they’ve covered for 20 years. It was easy and cheap, and provided good video for their shows.

    But it didn’t, or rather, they didn’t use it.  Did you see that analysis that on the three broadcast networks* there was less than an hour of total reporting on Afghanistan, in the last four years?

    *The DuMont was not included.

  79. 79.

    J R in WV

    @MisterForkbeard:

    Biden WILL won’t take a hit from this, because he was in charge when the 20-year-lie was exposed.

    He’s cleaning up the corruption in Afghanistan as well as in Washington DC. I think he’s been revolted by the criminal activity all around DC for much of the time he’s been there, and now he has the chance to do something about it.

  80. 80.

    Peale

    @Kay: Its just ridiculous. They really just want everyone to LOVE them, I mean LOVE us. They are truly the decedents of imperialists who just assumed that all those colonial subjects LOVED them the UK and everything tea and crumpets and “civilizing” only to find out that, no, they actually didn’t. Oh the BETRAYAL. Those Afghans have BETRAYED us and our noble meritocratic bloodlines.

  81. 81.

    debbie

    @rikyrah: 

    I wish Joe would point this out. I know he’s being presidential, above the fray, etc., but enough! Call them out for the bullshit artists they are!

  82. 82.

    WaterGirl

    @Kay: I swear I heard President Biden just yesterday talking about Afghanistan journalists being some of the refugees.  I’m not talking about NBC and others.

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