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The Biden Administration and All Things Politics
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Al-O-Meter
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Biden is blamed for the way he evacuated Bagram Air Base. The edge the Afghan military had over the Taliban was the ability to call for air support. That air support was all based out of Bagram Air Base. The Afghan Air Force did have pilots who could fly and were flying in support of the ground forces, but the maintenance on those aircraft was handled by contractors.
There was no orderly transfer of power from the American military to the Afghan military of Bagram Air Base. Without telling the Afghan military, our allies, or our citizens living in Afghanistan, we turned off the lights and left in the middle of the night. When the US Military left they took the aircraft maintenance contractors with them.
Biden has promised “over the horizon” air support, meaning from aircraft carriers and distant countries but he didn’t make good on that promise. The Afghans did what they could to keep the aircraft in the air including making zoom calls to mechanics in the US who would try to help them diagnose and instruct over the phone. One by one the aircraft broke. Within a matter of days there was no air support and the Taliban overran the Afghan military. It is the decisions, lack of communication, and actions associated with Bagram Air Base why so many are blaming Biden for the failure of the Afghan military.
Miscue After Miscue, U.S. Exit Plan Unravels
President Biden promised an orderly withdrawal. That pledge, compounded by missed signals and miscalculations, proved impossible.
LogGrad98
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That is the nature of American politics. The new guy gets all the credit of what happened before them, for a decade of intelligence operations for example (Obama got bin laden) and the blame for crappy decisions of the past. Depending of course on your specific political bent.
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When does the new guy get credit? For the past 8 months we’ve been giving Trump the credit for the vaccine so his followers would get vaccinated. There is a double standard here where Republicans have an insanely low level of standards that is met if they just refrain from eating their own lego pieces for 5 seconds and an insanely high level of standards for Democrats where they’re blamed no matter what.
Afghanistan is a mess that began with Reagan and the USSR in the 1980s. It became our mess after Bush invaded. Obama maintained the deception. Trump deserves credit for shutting the endless occupation down. And Biden deserves credit for keeping Trump’s deal.
I guess Biden could’ve evacuated earlier? I guess he could’ve processed more visas. But I’ve read/heard from enough experts that believe that even these things aren’t as clear cut as media members/cynical republicans critics make it out to be. Bagram is a two hour drive from Kabul. Securing the route to the airport would’ve been a great task. More Americans probably would’ve died. Processing visas? With covid forcing staffs to be understaffed and with our current nativist politics? Good luck. And had we mass evacuated earlier, wouldn’t that have potentially caused a panic that might’ve sped up the former government’s downfall?
Like most things, this is complicated. Much more complicated than what our reactionary media makes it out to be.
The thing that bugs me are the double standards applied to Trump and Biden. The same people online and on the media currently criticizing Biden like none other are the same Trump Ball Washers who’s be blaming obama or Clinton for this and blowing Trump had hewon re-election.
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fishonjazz
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I see you saying the Taliban over ran the afghan military. Now from what I understand trump made a deal with THE TALIBAN that we would withdraw from Afghanistan. He didn't include the afghan government in this deal. So it would seem to me that the intention was that the Taliban was supposed to take over the country. If that is the case then why would we provide air support to the afghan military? Seems like if we were going to support anyone it would be the Taliban since they are the ones that Trump made a deal with.Biden is blamed for the way he evacuated Bagram Air Base. The edge the Afghan military had over the Taliban was the ability to call for air support. That air support was all based out of Bagram Air Base. The Afghan Air Force did have pilots who could fly and were flying in support of the ground forces, but the maintenance on those aircraft was handled by contractors.
There was no orderly transfer of power from the American military to the Afghan military of Bagram Air Base. Without telling the Afghan military, our allies, or our citizens living in Afghanistan, we turned off the lights and left in the middle of the night. When the US Military left they took the aircraft maintenance contractors with them.
Biden has promised “over the horizon” air support, meaning from aircraft carriers and distant countries but he didn’t make good on that promise. The Afghans did what they could to keep the aircraft in the air including making zoom calls to mechanics in the US who would try to help them diagnose and instruct over the phone. One by one the aircraft broke. Within a matter of days there was no air support and the Taliban overran the Afghan military. It is the decisions, lack of communication, and actions associated with Bagram Air Base why so many are blaming Biden for the failure of the Afghan military.
Miscue After Miscue, U.S. Exit Plan Unravels
President Biden promised an orderly withdrawal. That pledge, compounded by missed signals and miscalculations, proved impossible.www.nytimes.com
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This is a really good point.
fishonjazz
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Like it would be weird if trump was on the phone with the Taliban leader making a deal to leave Afghanistan and the Taliban leader asked trump "what if the afghan military tries to resist us taking over?" And trump responded "well then we will support them and rain down hellfire on your asses." And the Taliban leader was like "cool cool, sounds good to us"
Al-O-Meter
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Trump did make a deal with the Taliban that included a withdrawal of US forces but its main purpose was to serve as a starting point for negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Everything was contingent on the so-called “intra-Afghan negotiations”.
The Afghan government wasn’t party to the agreement because at the time no one would agree on who the Afghan government was. Both Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah claimed victory in the 2019 election. That wasn’t sorted out until after the agreement had been made.
On the first day of the intra-Afghan negotiations there was supposed to be a big prisoner swap which the Afghan government refused to honor. Without the prisoner swap there was no intra-Afghan negotiations, and without the intra-Afghan negotiations there was no deal. Everyone except the US had broken the terms. Biden was free and clear to justifiably do whatever he wanted including stopping the clock on withdrawl.
The situation was stable and the US had zero people lost in combat for over a year. We knew who the Afghan government was and we knew who the Taliban leadership was. We could have restarted negotiations for the prisoner swap, made that exchange happen, and started the intra-Afghan negotiations at which the clock could once again start ticking on American withdrawl with a smooth transition. Biden did what he did because he chose to do it, not because he was handcuffed by any broken deal from the previous administration.
Afghan conflict: What will Taliban do after signing US deal?
A sense of cautious optimism is rising, but Afghanistan's political future is yet to be decided.
www.bbc.com
jazzVA
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Here is the “deal”—link. It basically says you stop shooting and fomenting terrorism (lol?) and we’ll leave. Oh and we’ll release 5,000 of your prisoners as a sweetener. Not so much a deal as a surrender agreement.
JimLes
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The Afghan military is a joke. You should not need planes or air support or contractors to defeat a ragtag army of 50 thousand(in a country of 40+ million) whose entire arsenal consists of Toyota trucks and rocket launchers.
At the end of the day, you have to want to fight. You don't need airplanes for that.
FalseFlagg K
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I’ve read that one of the major issues with the Afghan army has been desertions. Many just don’t want to fight. They signed up for the paycheck but many are illiterate and don’t really identify with Afghanistan as a country. Most identify with their localities and tribes more than the country.
It doesn’t seem like there was any amount of training or money could force the army to fight.