Honestly where are you at on withdrawal? From my viewpoint the US messed up twice.
First when trump negotiated with just the Taliban and didn’t include the Afghan government. How would that negotiation do anything except undermine Afghan legitimacy? No matter what came out of that agreement it would be doom the Afghan government. To me that would be an unequivocal error. No gray area. Maybe too simplistic a view?
Second, this withdrawal. Biden owns the last 7 months. The Taliban was able to hide their time since February 2020 when the trump agreement was in place and unleash their forces across the nation when Allied withdrawal was imminent. The lack of confidence in the Afghan government from a combination of factors led to many provincial governments and military outposts feeling as though their government wasn’t worth fighting for. The massive surrender speaks more to the lack of trust in the central government than a lack of ability of the Afghan military. A nation that has been at war basically non stop for 40 years knows how to fight. The perception is that there wasn’t much coordination or preparation between the Allies and the Afghan government.
Once the chaos of the evacuation began a few weeks ago, the Allies have done a good job under the circumstances . From what we know it seems that tens of thousands have been evacuated under relatively little chaos (Thursdays bombing an obvious glaring exception). The major problem is who is going to be left behind. This is an issue that will haunt us for decades. The at risk afghans should have been evacuated in much higher numbers for months leading up to now. This was hampered by trump not wanting to increase refugees admissions in general, but also by Biden not addressing the issue until it was almost too late. Only time will tell how in danger the remaining Afghans really are.
Honestly where are you at on withdrawal? From my viewpoint the US messed up twice.
First when trump negotiated with just the Taliban and didn’t include the Afghan government. How would that negotiation do anything except undermine Afghan legitimacy? No matter what came out of that agreement it would be doom the Afghan government. To me that would be an unequivocal error. No gray area. Maybe too simplistic a view?
Second, this withdrawal. Biden owns the last 7 months. The Taliban was able to hide their time since February 2020 when the trump agreement was in place and unleash their forces across the nation when Allied withdrawal was imminent. The lack of confidence in the Afghan government from a combination of factors led to many provincial governments and military outposts feeling as though their government wasn’t worth fighting for. The massive surrender speaks more to the lack of trust in the central government than a lack of ability of the Afghan military. A nation that has been at war basically non stop for 40 years knows how to fight. The perception is that there wasn’t much coordination or preparation between the Allies and the Afghan government.
Once the chaos of the evacuation began a few weeks ago, the Allies have done a good job under the circumstances . From what we know it seems that tens of thousands have been evacuated under relatively little chaos (Thursdays bombing an obvious glaring exception). The major problem is who is going to be left behind. This is an issue that will haunt us for decades. The at risk afghans should have been evacuated in much higher numbers for months leading up to now. This was hampered by trump not wanting to increase refugees admissions in general, but also by Biden not addressing the issue until it was almost too late. Only time will tell how in danger the remaining Afghans really are.
Except it’s ISIS-K instead of Al Qaeda?