the reason we’re leaving afghanistan is because of 20 years of shit like what happened today so blaming what happened today in afghanistan on us leaving is some fucking galaxy brain war pig logic
— John Cole (@Johngcole) August 27, 2021
Cable news hosts decided to flood the airwaves with the ass-covering rationizations of the people who spent twenty years in Afghanistan wasting soldiers lives and billions of aid on a policy catastrophe while lying about it relentlessly to the American people. https://t.co/RwYvJewj5f
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 27, 2021
Nobody is making them do this. @jaketapper just woke up and thought to himself “in this moment of peril, what America needs is for me to help Ryan Crocker lie to the public to salvage his own reputation.”
Weeks of this shit.
How many American troops died in Afghanistan during Crocker’s tour as top civilian there? For what? What did he and Petraeus achieve during their surge?
For some reason the question “why are Americans dying in Afghanistan?” was not considered an interesting or important question until someone decided to end the war.
======
Counterpoint: we don't, actually https://t.co/EkpjgfgGex
— Mike Black (@MikeBlack114) August 26, 2021
But instead we get nodding sagely followed by "and as always sir thank you for your time and expert commentary"
— Mike Black (@MikeBlack114) August 26, 2021
So he’s saying he had 2 years leading the CIA, followed by 2 years as Sec of Defense, & under his watch we couldn’t “win” the war on terrorism.
Which reminds me that Kerry said it was a mistake to think of it as a war that could be won, when it was a problem to try to contain https://t.co/BEMU91gVvN
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) August 26, 2021
Yes, it does seem like a problem. It sure does. https://t.co/Y41ndcv8or
— Greg Greene (@ggreeneva) August 26, 2021
======
It’s amazing that the U.S. has gotten so many people out of Kabul so quickly. These people have been rescued from Taliban. But it hasn't been smooth, as the WH has tried to portray it.
Young Marines and soldiers manning the gates are having to decide who lives and dies.
— Paul Szoldra (@PaulSzoldra) August 25, 2021
Just this morning I got a message from a Marine I served with a decade ago, who has been desperately trying to get his interpreter out. This interpreter helped during our 04-05 deployment. He has SIV paperwork. There are multiple veterans working like hell to get him out.
He has been stuck at a Taliban checkpoint beyond the Abbey Gate being manned by Marines with a massive crowd of people in the way. A Marine on the ground told me flat out he will not make it in if he’s back that far.
This has been my timeline of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for more than a week. There are veterans posting on TikTok as they talk to their terrified interpreters, trying to tell them anything that will help. Some haven’t slept in days. Some have had success. Many have not.
“What are they gonna do when they call them a month from now?” a Marine trying to coordinate a rescue of his interpreter told me today. “When they say my brother has been killed. My mother has been killed.”
This is moral injury happening before our eyes.
======
The intellectual dishonesty that we have seen in critiques of Biden's handling of the exit from Afghanistan has been spectacular.
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) August 25, 2021
That’s not to say some critiques are not warranted. They certainly are. But, some of the arguments being used are so indefensible they require us to question the critics’ motives or expertise. Here are some of the worst ones.
1. Biden owns this. (No. The authors of 20 yrs of war own this. The corrupt Afghan govt & the Afghan military who stood down own this. The Trump Admin that set the deadlines, drew down the troops, left behind the materiel & released 5000 Taliban own this.)
2. Well, at least he owns the chaos surrounding our exit. (No. There’s no way that the Taliban regaining control would not have led to chaos w/many thousands of Afghans seeking to escape the rule of a thug regime. Whenever we started airlifting folks out, it would’ve started.)
3. Well, at least he should have been better prepared for the chaos. (Ok. I’m gonna give you this one. But having said that, efforts to prepare were rebuffed. The Afghan gov’t did not want the US beginning mass evacuations for the reasons cited above.)
4. The US could have given those in jeopardy more warning. (No. We began discussing leaving seriously 12 yrs ago. Trump announced he wanted out when he ran & signed a deal w/an earlier deadline last yr. Biden ran saying he would leave. State warned people to leave in April.)
5. The US abandoned our allies. (No. Some of those allies left before we did. Others were well aware of US discussions re: departure, knew of the Trump deal. And there has been close coordination with allies throughout this evacuation process.)
6. The evacuation was bungled. (No. It started off badly. But it is still under way. It is currently one of the biggest airlifts in human history and within hours we will pass 100,000 safely flown out of Kabul. Actually, it has turned out to be a masterful logistical feat.)
7. Taliban control of Afg will make it a potential breeding ground for terror again. (There was no scenario in which they didn’t gain control. The US has many means to respond to terror threats. Despite US military presence in Afg. the Taliban steadily gained ground for years.)
8. People will be left behind. (It is wildly unrealistic to think the US could remove everyone at risk from Afg. What’s being done is above and beyond expectations. Other forms of political, diplomatic & economic pressure must be used to promote human rights in Afghanistan.)
9. We could easily have left troops there indefinitely. (No. There was a cost to that and a risk. The risk grew as the Taliban grew in strength. Trump accelerated that with the release of prisoners and his announced departure. Staying would have required a bigger investment.)
10. But we have left troops in Germany and Korea. (Not comparable. Those are allied nations facing real imminent threats from major enemies who pose a strategic risk to the United States. We have no similar on-going interest in Afghanistan.)
11. But the troops could have protected women and girls. (First, as noted, the Taliban was gaining strength for years–despite the presence of the troops. Second, troops are not the means we advance such interests anywhere else. It is not a sustainable or effective approach.)
12. But Biden says human rights are at the center of our foreign policy. (That can be true without deploying troops to confront all threats to rights. It must be. Because we’ll never do that.Are critics suggesting deployments now to Ethiopia? Myanmar? To protect women elsewhere?)
13. It’s not about getting out of Afghanistan. That’s a distraction from the issue at hand. (No. It is about getting out of Afghanistan. It is about ending a 20 yr war. It is about acknowledging a massive US foreign policy failure & shifting to new priorities. That’s the point.)
14. Biden was part of the problem, he’s known about this all along. (No. Biden has been arguing to wind this down for 12 years. His view was over-ruled by President Obama. And after 9/11 almost everyone supported going in after Al Qaeda. For good reason.)
15. But…but…it’s messy and painful. (As @stephenwertheim
has pointed out. You can’t lose a war and make it look like you’ve won. Getting out was right. Some chaos was inevitable. The airlift is a major logistical achievement.)
======
I wrote (again) about the "straight news" media's embrace of unabashed advocacy against the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Here's a capsule summary of my indictment of the past weeks' coverage:https://t.co/3M0ecBZjRm pic.twitter.com/raidcz5QOu
— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) August 25, 2021
It's a bit stunning how many elite foreign correspondents felt comfortable *overtly* editorializing against U.S. policy (though the covert editorializing is likely more consequential) https://t.co/3M0ecBZjRm pic.twitter.com/CTkL2nF4Ii
— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) August 25, 2021
I particularly enjoyed that disinfo trackers were reporting on these same themes being pushed by Russia/China before the US even left, but little critical thought as to why that would be/if public perception might be being manipulated.
— Monica Childers (@mcranechilders) August 25, 2021
You can try to pre-emptively dismiss claims of hawkery all you want, but the brutal truth is that these claims only make any sense if you just oppose withdrawal per se. The only way of keeping the Taliban out of power was another escalation of troops with no end in sight.
— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) August 25, 2021
======
if your immediate response to the tragic death of american servicemembers is to bomb women and children to death we’ve identified the bad guy and hey it’s you
— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) August 27, 2021
Villago Delenda Est
Just fuck the fucking operatives of the MIC. Put them on a rocketship to the Sun and forget about them. This 20 year boondoggle for defense contractors and ticketpunchers in uniform is an abomination.
debbie
You say fuck LBJ,
I say fuck Ryan Crocker.
Just Chuck
So Todd, should we use nuclear weapons to destroy those cities, nerve gas, or should we just round everyone up and put them in boxcars? I’m sure you have ideas, Todd.
How does that motherfucker have a job anywhere?
Cacti
US foreign policy, for as long as I can remember, has always been some version of:
“We must send more troops to die to honor the sacrifice of the troops that died.”
topclimber
I wonder if “losing” in Afghanistan might end up as fortunately as it did in Vietnam.
Hanoi seems happy to have decent relations with us. They have less use for Chinese hegemony (right next door) than they did for ours (an ocean away).
Maybe if we provide a 20 million doses of Covid vaccine to Afghanistan, provide targeted economic aid, and let them resolve themselves what flavor of Islam they want, we get to the same place with them in 10 years.
Percysowner
Well Todd, the other option was this
War is never clean and harmless, but this move is as close as you can get. It will probably get nasty again, but we responded, got the guy who planned the attack and either had no or minimal civilian casualties AND we continue to get out.
topclimber
@Cacti: Sunk cost fallacy = American exceptionalism.
Cacti
@topclimber: Imagine if we’d “won” Vietnam.
We’d now be in about our 65th year of permanent occupation.
Cacti
@Percysowner: When the inevitable retaliatory attack comes, we can say it’s because they hate our freedom.
mrmoshpotato
@debbie: Fuck Dick, Donnie (Donny?), and W!
Omnes Omnibus
The Foreign Policy pundits are pretending that we could have kept the status quo – reasonably peaceful with only 2500 troops. This is a flat out lie. The only reason it has been relatively peaceful is because the Taliban are living up to their deal with Trump. Our real choices were ramp up to 25-50,000 troops and start killing the fuck out of people or get out. I am not prepared to ask our soldiers to become monsters so that we can stay some place that is of little strategic importance in order to salve some assholes’ pride.
In addition, pulling out of a hostile region can be ugly and bloody as fuck. Knock on wood, we are doing damned good job so far.
RaflW
Leon Panetta mustered out a First Lieutenant (quite a while ago, I presume). If he’d like to pick up where he left off and ship over for frontline service, then — and only then — does he get to restart this godforsaken, idiotic, endlessly wasteful war
eta: I don’t suppose the military doing an ‘over the horizon’ drone strike on a supposedly key ISIS actor will matter to any of these war pigs, will it?
Percysowner
@Cacti: I don’t know. Biden isn’t the type to say that and the Democrats don’t really lean that way. The Republicans will be blaming everything on Biden, instead of the all encompassing “them”. Biden misjudged, Biden should have done more, Biden should have waited, Biden should have put the troops back in, Biden should have removed them more quickly. The Repubs will use any retaliation against Biden and the Democrats. The actual attackers won’t even be a blip on their radar, except to justify not admitting any Afghan refugees.
Brachiator
We could always arm the media and send them to Afghanistan. Let’s see how long they last.
Another Scott
Speaking of consequence-free things that really aren’t…
ProPublica on the Colorado River:
Here’s hoping the redistricting efforts are sensible, Team D wins the next few elections, and that sensible policies are put in place. Lots of difficult challenges are ahead.
Cheers,
Scott.
RaflW
Also, wen I read that “A heavily fortified C.I.A. base in Kabul has been destroyed.
[In] an explosion heard across Kabul, Americans destroyed the base so its contents would not fall to the Taliban,” I tend to think Biden remains quite serious about leaving.
The public supports the end of our involvement in this quagmire. Better now than six months or two years from now. Both in terns of limiting the losses to our people in the military, and in political terms. Yes the GOP will flog our ‘surrender’ in the run up to the mid-terms and again for ’24, but the longer away from the airlift, the less voters will rank that as mattering.
Gin & Tonic
@Percysowner: Guy should have had a sidearm. Wayne LaPierre says that’s what you need to protect yourself.
RaflW
@Another Scott: The redistricting news in CO is, in my opinion, terrible. The allegedly independent commission has drawn up a plan that will yield four D and four R seats, based on voting patterns in the proposed 8 districts. This in a state that voted 55 – 42 for a Democrat for president.
Fuck.
At the very god damned least, it should be 4 safe D seats, 3 safe-ish R seats, and one competitive seat. At the least.
Oh, and ethical lapse dipshit, mask refusnik & climate denier Rep. Boebert will be representing most every ski area and all the (Dem voting) ski towns in Colorado. Won’t that be grand?!
Fuck.
P.S. – I will be posting about this more in the weeks ahead. This is a damnable, bullshit R power move in a state moving decidedly more progressive.
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator:
As I’ve been saying about these whiny bastards, “Go enlist!”
StringOnAStick
@Another Scott: Everyone should watch the documentary “Kiss the Soil” . Regenerative agriculture can sequester huge amounts of carbon and reduce what’s already been released. No fancy unproven technology, just a change in how we farm.
Brachiator
The Phileas Club is a current affairs podcast hosted by a Frenchman who lives in Finland. On the most recent episode, he noted that his wife and her friends have concluded that the Afghanistan withdrawal proves that America cannot be trusted anymore.
This sentiment may be echoed throughout Finnish society. They depended on America to keep them safe from Russia and now the country is so rattled that there are hints that the Finnish government may turn to Sweden or France to purchase 60 jet planes and other military equipment instead of buying them from the US.
The host of the show felt that the US should have been willing to stay in Afghanistan for up to 50 years in order to establish a stable regime there.
I found it interesting that these people felt comfortable under the shelter of American protection and do see the US as the world’s policeman. Also interesting that they would happily spend US defense dollars if they could in order to provide international order and a buffer against Russia and China.
Biden did the right thing in withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan. All the countries who took US intervention for granted or who viewed it as their own security blanket need to rethink their expectations of American foreign policy.
Benw
@Omnes Omnibus: word is bond
Ken
Getting a little late for that….
Urza
Exactly how much carbon would a normal ship have to put off in order to tow an iceberg of a size actually worth bothering I wonder.
Steeplejack
An interesting take:
Lt. Condition
@topclimber: The way it’s explained here in Hanoi is that Vietnam fought the Americans for ten years, the French for a hundred and the Chinese for a thousand.
China has always been their primary concern, aside from that relatively short interval during the French colonial period.
Yarrow
@Another Scott:
Saudi Arabia gave up growing wheat and imports all their wheat to save water. Wouldn’t surprise me if this is part of what’s going on here. So we’re struggling with water but we’re sending crops grown with our limited water to these countries who don’t have enough water. Water wars are already a thing and are going to be a lot worse.
OGLiberal
It pains me that I know a lot more about all of this shit than the folks opining about it on TV. Or at least know more about all of this shit than the people on TV who aren’t lying. Because I know very little about this shit but enough to know when people are lying or hyperventilating.
HumboldtBlue
Speaking of ending wars. Netflix has a series named The Defeated set in Berlin in the immediate aftermath of WW2.
It’s a fascinating subject and one I am woefully under-read upon, so it has a draw. But — and there are some big buts — there are some giant plot holes, starting with the main protagonist who is supposed to be an NYPD detective sent to Berlin to help rebuild the police force who speaks with a distinct and at times hilarious Southie accent.
There is an edge to the story, including the brutalization of the civilian population following the end of open warfare, and combined with the world’s and Germany’s reckoning of just what they inflicted on Jews and other minorities it does focus on some of those moving and gruesome story lines.
There’s a good mix of language use and subtitles are needed, and it also features some revenge-driven graphic violence. There are some compelling plot devices and I have stuck with it, but it’s lacking in some key areas, including plot consistency, costuming/dress and an utter lack of explanation why a supposed NYPD detective (of obvious war age who did not serve, although his brother did and who plays a major role) who speaks like he’s just walked off a movie set with Marky Mark and Ben Affleck.
Ken
@Urza: Container shipping is remarkably efficient. But towing an iceberg is not container shipping. The currents also don’t look helpful, especially on the east coast.
Kent
For Fuck’s sake. The experts also suggested that we could have kept the country stable with only 2500 troops there. That was something that Finland could easily have handled all by themselves. Let them do it. That’s only about half a brigade. The Finish Army is about 40,000 strong with 900,000 reservists.
Kent
@HumboldtBlue: I watched the whole series and found it interesting. But I wondered how historically accurate it was in the portrayal of the descent of Berlin into criminal chaos. I’ve read quite a bit about the war and nothing I have ever read suggested that the Germans themselves turned Berlin into a criminal free-for-all at the end of the war.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: A lot of people need to take a few deep breaths before they say things.
OGLiberal
Here’s what would make the America Firster Trumpers happy:
The American Way, bitches!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OGLiberal: Randy Newman got to the idea first:
Political Science.
HumboldtBlue
@Kent:
I was reminded of Bernard Samson in Len Deighton’s trilogy, and from what little I have consumed of post-war Germany/Berlin, is that crime, graft and the black market were substantial and impactful and while it wasn’t driven specifically by Germans, corruption was rampant.
The Germans may have not turned it into a criminal playground, but they laid the foundation and reaped the whirlwind.
Kay
@Brachiator:
Well, the threat not to buy the 60 jet planes doesn’t make a lot of sense, since if the US remained they wouldn’t need to buy 60 jet planes at all since they’d be relying on ours.
These people aren’t even trying to make sense.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: Why would Post-WWII Berlin be appreciably different than the Vienna of The Third Man?
Chetan Murthy
@Kay: I think: you buy US planes, you buy US trainers, US joint exercises, US contractors servicing them, etc. A long-term …(ahem) relationship with our MIC, so to speak.
Mike E
@Percysowner: shorter:
Any. Idea. Is as good as any other idea to the Movement Conservative.
Kay
@Chetan Murthy:
But aren’t they buying the “60” planes because they no longer trust us? So these were loss of trust planes. Had we stayed for 50 years they would still trust us, so wouldn’t need the 60 additional.
I’m looking for net new planes. It’s a very specific threat so I think we should add and subtract :)
OGLiberal
I respect his service and that he hates Donald Trump but this Kinzinger shit is just straight outta 2002:
“The fact is there are people that, no matter how much we want to go home, they want to kill us and we either fight them there, or we’ll fight them here”
I know I highlighted this on a previous thread but what the ever loving fuck dude? Really? That same old fucking bullshit? This is like a fucking parody line. Your people really let you say this? When you previewed this did they fucking chuckle and did you realize that maybe not say this? Or did they pat you on the back and say, “tell it, man!”, and after that did you realize that maybe not say this, because they are morons that you pay to work for you? Because, dude, you are a fucking caricature. A wing-nut, Donald Trump hating cart-fucking-toon. And fire the people who let you say this because, I mean, fuck…
Kay
@Chetan Murthy:
60 additional planes, 30 additional years, I don’t know. Doesn’t seem like a great deal for us.
We should ask John Bolton.
HumboldtBlue
Oh, and just on general principles of daily living, fuck the fucking New York Yankees.
Just sayin’.
Brachiator
@Kent:
Finland had 195 troops in Afghanistan serving as part of NATO-led forces. Most of those troops were withdrawn between 2011 and 2014.
The country also continued to take part in the European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan.
Recently, Finland began evacuation of Afghan citizens who worked for Finnish agencies.
prostratedragon
@HumboldtBlue: Ahem.
HumboldtBlue
@prostratedragon:
Just sayin’.
Gvg
@Kay: possibly because Finland is near Russia, Russia may have been propagandizing them even more than us, for longer. I have no special knowledge and am just speculating, but that dumb idea strongly reminds me of the kind of nonsense that we get, that we know comes from Russian disinformation. There is something about that flavor of the story…..I wouldn’t be surprised if some people saying that were paid to say it either.
Brachiator
@Kay:
From a May 2020 news story….
This would presumably be part of a Russian deterrent force. Finland always has to look over its shoulder at Russia.
Of course, 64 planes would not be enough to do anything if Russia really wanted to do anything. But the planes would provide a comforting security blanket.
prostratedragon
@HumboldtBlue: In case you were wondering.
HumboldtBlue
@prostratedragon:
Am I missing a link, perhaps?
John Revolta
@OGLiberal:
FTFY
mrmoshpotato
Emphasis mine.
Ummmm….
piratedan
noting a tad more GOP Congressional stridency has been taking place… with the subpoena of cell phone records, I’m starting to get the feeling that the 1/6 commission is looking to connect dots and provide packages to the DOJ for follow up. Hell, even if they don’t, if they can simply kick them out of the House, I would be happy.
In my newly minted fever dreams of acceptance regarding political conspiracies… starting to think that there were plans in place where these guys thought that they would use these “brave patriots” to perform “citizen arrests” of Democrats and take over the country. I would not be shocked about finding out who organized and financed it too.
Cathie from Canada
One common trope from the press about presidents is “this is the night that _____ became president!” – usually in relation to a new president ordering an attack on some other country, and its usually a pretty stupid analysis
But once this is over, and the troops are finally out, the analysis may well be that Biden “became president” during this two-week period. He has maintained his commitment to saving American lives and putting American interests first, even in spite of enormous pressures from dozens of supposed “experts” to keep the money machine going. This includes way too many of the national press and Pentagon, many retread pundits, and a bunch of discredited retirees from three or four previous administrations, all whining and complaining and getting hysterical about wanting to stay stay stay.
It is actually somewhat incredible that Biden could do this, and it increases my respect for him even more.
Jay
@Kay:
Yeah, it’s way more complex than that.
It’s being “spun” by paid “commentators”.
The Rafael and Gripen are “proven” multirole platforms, ( even Canada are considering them), vs Gen 4+ proven platforms, vs US Gen 5.
There is a reason why most of Europe and Canada bought Leopard II’s and not export Abrams, and it’s not political so much, it’s cost and other factors.
J R in WV
@StringOnAStick:
Just change the most conservative “We’ve always done it that way, my great-grandpa did it that way, so I’m gonna do it that way too!” group of Americans in existence. .
.
If we had solid sustainable Dem control, we could make farm support payments of all sorts contingent on proper successful changes in farming technique. IF. easy peasy.
J R in WV
@OGLiberal:
I forget whether this is a quiote from Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney, but someone like that, who failed to win THEIR war 20 years ago.
Fuck anyone dumb enough to still be saying that today.
The current airlift is a fucking miracle of logistics and all those guys deserve medals and promotions.
I’m not going to make counter-proposals or double-talk decisions. It’s working well, and I hope and expect we may prevail on the new government to allow regular commercial flights soon to bring out more Afghans who helped us.
They have already asked us to maintain diplomatic connections with them, a good sign. Of course there may well be a disconnect between senior people and troops on the ground exercising their new power and bigoted attitudes.
But what do I know, I am a progressive liberal, anti-war hippy.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
If I was going to make a recommendation to the Finns, I would pick the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, the F-35 can’t provide comparable air time, and is too high maintenance even to be productive for our own AF.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Nice try, Catholics.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV: Yes, but you can’t see the F-35*.
*So sayeth TFG.
germy
Central Planning
@StringOnAStick: Did you mean “Kiss the Ground”? Google returned that documentary.
And fuck AppleTV for not pointing me to Netflix for either one of them.
evodevo
@J R in WV: It was a quote from good ole “W”…
BretH
@J R in WV: I always remember this from an old anthropology professor: “Change is conservative.”
Meaning that people don’t want to move or completely change what they do so they embrace smaller changes that enable them to continue doing what they have done for ages, and living where they have always lived.
Miss Bianca
@RaflW: Have you seen an actual plan yet? I’ve only seen one draft plan that was drawn up by staff, not the actual redistricting committee. Is that the same one you’re talking about, or has a new draft come out?
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Yeah, what ProPublica doesn’t seem to realize is what a backlash even *suggesting* that Americans – or Coloradans, particularly – try to go meatless for one day. Gov. Polis suggested it earlier this year and in response, all the Goobers in my neck of the woods decided to have “Meat Out!” BBQs and shit. With the predictable spike in COVID infections afterwards.
Adult ODD has become the main modus operandi of self-described “conservatives”. Good luck with that “meatless Monday” mandate, guys.
Another Scott
@Miss Bianca: I noticeded that too and thought of the old saw (roughly): “for every complex problem there’s a solution that is quick and easy and wrong.”
Selling a 1/7 cut in beef production to cattle ranchers is not easy.
And what would replace it? Salmon? Alfalfa burgers? Almond paste steaks??
If the solutions were easy and didn’t cut the income of powerful groups, they would have been done already. The politics are complicated. But clearly the problem is serious…
Cheers,
Scott.
Kayla Rudbek
@Baud: In my opinion, the Church should have stuck with the meatless Fridays and shut up about birth control back at Vatican II. Every religion/denomination needs some sort of difference in their trade dress to distinguish themselves…