I was wondering yesterday if I should open with this, and pleased to see Beagles doing so, but I was expecting some opinions to go along with it, but I guess I will just go it on my own.
Watched this on the Sunday shows yesterday and it was mostly just politicians blaming each other. Biden had some poor bloke, Blinken, the secretary of state. on every show. He basically said the same thing every time, and didn't respond much to questions as these blokes are wont to do. If twenty years of building up their army didn't work, likely a hundred years more would not do that either, and there was no reason to pour any more of our treasure into a lost cause.
True enough, but couldn't this pullout have been done in a better way? Well I don't think anyone foresaw how quickly our US trained army would collapse, maybe they should have, or at any rate should have had some plan C or something if it should happen. This is a bad on Biden and he should have, and maybe yet will, make some kind of apology. Sure probably his advisors had all said this will work out, and what's a guy to do, but it happened on his watch and he should make some kind of statement, or admit that mistakes were made.
The Trumpists on the show were all over Biden, not so neatly finessing the way their leader had advocated this very thing for a few years, vaguely hinting that Trump would have somehow handled it better because many say he is the smartest man that ever lived.
Liz was there, reminding me of why, though I find her standing up to Trump fearlessly inspiring, otherwise I find her politics odious. This whole Mess-O-Potamia is her daddy's work over the weak-minded W. A big footprint of our power in the middle of the middle east with not much forethought other than to kill all of our enemies, of which there will be an endless supply what with our foot on their neck and all.
I remember just after 911 I was not overeager to get into the mideast, but I could see how we had to do it, most people wanted some kind of action, and we did take an awful blow, so let's do it. Let's do it quick and let's get it over with and let's get out.
I remember how good our soldiers looked on horseback in the mountains, so strong, so resolute, so capable, and it seemed like the people liked us well enough, that Northern Alliance looked like good guys out of Star Wars. And we were successful and though Bin Laden escaped we drove Al Qaeda out, and it was time to dust our hands off and get ourselves out.
But suddenly, look Iraq, look Weapons of Mass Destruction. They beat the drums, and got enough dems caught up in their cause including, I just looked this up, Joe Biden, and then bam, the twenty year war was on. Did not go well in Iraq and we got kicked out of there but for some reason we hung in Afghanistan.
Big Obama man, as you know, but I always thought he was too hawkish. It seems like he might have had better instincts but he did back a surge in Afghanistan. I thought at the time that he kind of went along with it to please the generals, and maybe so that when that didn't work, he could shrug his shoulders and get out, but that never happened.
Trump was going to get out, the way for four years he was going to build that wall, and have infrastructure week, and announce his really great health care plan, and we all know where those went.
And now it's done. The hawks, just listening to John Bolton are all like we should have left some force there, but this ignores the fact that all this time the Afghan army never got very good, and the Taliban kept getting stronger and it was unlikely we could have kept a small force there anyway.
It's done.
Well there are my opinions. Anybody want to give theirs?
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