Taliban reclaims Afghanistan

[tech37]

How does the admin not know how many Americans are still in Afghanistan? Is this the truth? If so, how can that be?

Also, what is the deal with language coming from admin and through Biden himself where they say they will evacuate "every American who wants to leave"? What the hell is that? What American on earth would want to stay? Even if there were a few, why use such specific policy language with the American public? Very weird to say the least.

Perhaps one of you really smart persons on here would be so kind to explain these puzzling questions.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics ... index.html

Maybe the Americans don’t want to leave their spouses? Who knows…..

[tech37]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics ... index.html

Maybe the Americans don’t want to leave their spouses? Who knows…..

I'm sure there are thousands and thousands in that position

"Who knows"... seems accurate.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics ... index.html

Maybe the Americans don’t want to leave their spouses? Who knows…..

I'm sure there are thousands and thousands in that position

"Who knows"... seems accurate.

Thanks

[Typical Lax Dad]

[Kismet]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics ... index.html

Maybe the Americans don’t want to leave their spouses? Who knows…..

I'm sure there are thousands and thousands in that position

"Who knows"... seems accurate.

The embassy (State Department) do not require Americans to register upon arrival or departure so there is no official manifest of citizens in-country. This is the case in most, if not all countries around the world with possibly a few exceptions in very dangerous locations. It is likely that citizens looking to depart need to contact State Department or present themselves at the airport with passport documentation in order to be admitted and then flown out.

[old salt]

...It involved flying airplanes over enemy controlled territory with AA capability. Like the current situation, USA military personnel/equipment in potential war zone had the Soviets chosen to challenge. The operation also involved landing aircraft at Berlin Tempelhof Airport - at the height of the campaign, one plane landed every 45 seconds.

Minimal AA threat in Kabul. Terrorist threat at HKIA is the concern now.
1 US military airlift flight now departing every 45 minutes.
Getting outbound passengers inside the wire, sorting them out & vetting them, is the limiting factor.

[jhu72]

The hidden costs of American imperialism, a reminder.

[jhu72]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics ... index.html

Maybe the Americans don’t want to leave their spouses? Who knows…..

I'm sure there are thousands and thousands in that position

"Who knows"... seems accurate.

The embassy (State Department) do not require Americans to register upon arrival or departure so there is no official manifest of citizens in-country. This is the case in most, if not all countries around the world with possibly a few exceptions in very dangerous locations. It is likely that citizens looking to depart need to contact State Department or present themselves at the airport with passport documentation in order to be admitted and then flown out.

... with freedom comes responsibility. Seems a lot of folks forget that.

[youthathletics]

Latest presser: Nice job BIden.....just dump it all on the military, expecting them to get it all done. After first pulling them out, then sending them back in, then have to work night and day to get them out by the 31st. As they have to turn people away........talk about mentally mind effing our soldiers.

Nice job leading the presser with a 3 Trillion Dollar spending deal, then talk about his boys at the G7 and UN are all cool with everything, then make it sound this effing debacle is just another day at the office. He's running scared of the Taliban.....UFB.

Who cut the deal with the Taliban and sent all of our guys home and told the Afghans to let all the Taliban prisoners out…. You want him to start another war? That will show them…

The treaty was FEB20,18 months ago, slick, nothing like waiting until the last minute, to eff over your own people.

youth, again, the 'team' you were riding effed it up royally...the only recourse for Biden would have been a re-escalation of the war, which he definitely wasn't going to do, having seen that such was fruitless in prior attempts.

There you go again with the partisan scoreboard card...worn out and childish.

So it seems you are no different than BIden, you too, would sit on a deadline for close to 18+ months, to only wait until the last minute to perform would should have been a calculated and precision exercise with contingencies, rather than what we witnessed with this frenetic and chaotic exercise that also ignored our allies, as noted in the treaty. Further more, mentally mind effing our military men and women...putting them in to yet another position of jeopardy, facing our own weapons this time, while adding another layer of mind effing stress they bring home. I would expect more from you, especially as you have shared your story of health over the years.

[youthathletics]

The hidden costs of American imperialism, a reminder.

....agreed. Its out there on the local news channels.

[MDlaxfan76]

Latest presser: Nice job BIden.....just dump it all on the military, expecting them to get it all done. After first pulling them out, then sending them back in, then have to work night and day to get them out by the 31st. As they have to turn people away........talk about mentally mind effing our soldiers.

Nice job leading the presser with a 3 Trillion Dollar spending deal, then talk about his boys at the G7 and UN are all cool with everything, then make it sound this effing debacle is just another day at the office. He's running scared of the Taliban.....UFB.

Who cut the deal with the Taliban and sent all of our guys home and told the Afghans to let all the Taliban prisoners out…. You want him to start another war? That will show them…

The treaty was FEB20,18 months ago, slick, nothing like waiting until the last minute, to eff over your own people.

youth, again, the 'team' you were riding effed it up royally...the only recourse for Biden would have been a re-escalation of the war, which he definitely wasn't going to do, having seen that such was fruitless in prior attempts.

There you go again with the partisan scoreboard card...worn out and childish.

So it seems you are no different than BIden, you too, would sit on a deadline for close to 18+ months, to only wait until the last minute to perform would should have been a calculated and precision exercise with contingencies, rather than what we witnessed with this frenetic and chaotic exercise that also ignored our allies, as noted in the treaty. Further more, mentally mind effing our military men and women...putting them in to yet another position of jeopardy, facing our own weapons this time, while adding another layer of mind effing stress they bring home. I would expect more from you, especially as you have shared your story of health over the years.

childish?

Biden has been in office 6 months, not 18 months. He didn't sign the treaty. He didn't ignore that the Taliban wasn't abiding by the treaty and try to accelerate departure even faster, with even less planning.

I've been clear, I thought that the original mistake was declaring a 100% departure from Afghanistan, and even worse giving a date certain. I thought ( but don't have the full analytical, intelligence insight) that a small international force could maintain a strategic foothold in Afghanistan, with a reasonably stable, if imperfect, government...I also thought, as Adm. Mullen points out (now), that any such could only succeed if corruption was rooted out and the gov't gained sufficient credibility and legitimacy.

I don't know whether that was ever actually going to work long term, and whether the costs would have been worth it, but that's what I thought.

But by the time Biden was elected, the situation on the ground was severely worse, and the odds of my preference being successfully resumed were far, far worse, given that the US had already made clear we weren't going to stay long term and the Taliban had moved strongly in the meanwhile. That ain't his fault, and it's clear that his assessment was that the departure was necessary, indeed consistent with his decade long instincts on Afghanistan.

It appears that our intelligence community largely thought that the fall of the government would take more time, we were not anticipating as rapid a fall, though we'd indeed told everyone to get out months ago (many ignored that warning). Nevertheless, we're executing a massive withdrawal pretty darn effectively at present, dwarfing what was done, for instance in the fall of Saigon.

There will be plenty to critique about this withdrawal, but I don't think it's at all partisan, much less childish, to look at the actual facts as to who was in charge at various points and the implications for the subsequent POTUS of the decisions made by his predecessors. That goes for Obama and Bush as well...decisions were made by each that had implications for their successors.

[Typical Lax Dad]

...It involved flying airplanes over enemy controlled territory with AA capability. Like the current situation, USA military personnel/equipment in potential war zone had the Soviets chosen to challenge. The operation also involved landing aircraft at Berlin Tempelhof Airport - at the height of the campaign, one plane landed every 45 seconds.

Minimal AA threat in Kabul. Terrorist threat at HKIA is the concern now.
1 US military airlift flight now departing every 45 minutes.
Getting outbound passengers inside the wire, sorting them out & vetting them, is the limiting factor.

Looks like we are doing a decent job getting people out now.

[MDlaxfan76]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics ... index.html

Maybe the Americans don’t want to leave their spouses? Who knows…..

I'm sure there are thousands and thousands in that position

"Who knows"... seems accurate.

The embassy (State Department) do not require Americans to register upon arrival or departure so there is no official manifest of citizens in-country. This is the case in most, if not all countries around the world with possibly a few exceptions in very dangerous locations. It is likely that citizens looking to depart need to contact State Department or present themselves at the airport with passport documentation in order to be admitted and then flown out.

I guess you are one of those really "smart people" that tech wanted to respond...or you've just actually been paying attention.

[lagerhead]

Latest presser: Nice job BIden.....just dump it all on the military, expecting them to get it all done. After first pulling them out, then sending them back in, then have to work night and day to get them out by the 31st. As they have to turn people away........talk about mentally mind effing our soldiers.

Nice job leading the presser with a 3 Trillion Dollar spending deal, then talk about his boys at the G7 and UN are all cool with everything, then make it sound this effing debacle is just another day at the office. He's running scared of the Taliban.....UFB.

Who cut the deal with the Taliban and sent all of our guys home and told the Afghans to let all the Taliban prisoners out…. You want him to start another war? That will show them…

The treaty was FEB20,18 months ago, slick, nothing like waiting until the last minute, to eff over your own people.

youth, again, the 'team' you were riding effed it up royally...the only recourse for Biden would have been a re-escalation of the war, which he definitely wasn't going to do, having seen that such was fruitless in prior attempts.

There you go again with the partisan scoreboard card...worn out and childish.

So it seems you are no different than BIden, you too, would sit on a deadline for close to 18+ months, to only wait until the last minute to perform would should have been a calculated and precision exercise with contingencies, rather than what we witnessed with this frenetic and chaotic exercise that also ignored our allies, as noted in the treaty. Further more, mentally mind effing our military men and women...putting them in to yet another position of jeopardy, facing our own weapons this time, while adding another layer of mind effing stress they bring home. I would expect more from you, especially as you have shared your story of health over the years.

childish?

Biden has been in office 6 months, not 18 months. He didn't sign the treaty. He didn't ignore that the Taliban wasn't abiding by the treaty and try to accelerate departure even faster, with even less planning.

I've been clear, I thought that the original mistake was declaring a 100% departure from Afghanistan, and even worse giving a date certain. I thought ( but don't have the full analytical, intelligence insight) that a small international force could maintain a strategic foothold in Afghanistan, with a reasonably stable, if imperfect, government...I also thought, as Adm. Mullen points out (now), that any such could only succeed if corruption was rooted out and the gov't gained sufficient credibility and legitimacy.

I don't know whether that was ever actually going to work long term, and whether the costs would have been worth it, but that's what I thought.

But by the time Biden was elected, the situation on the ground was severely worse, and the odds of my preference being successfully resumed were far, far worse, given that the US had already made clear we weren't going to stay long term and the Taliban had moved strongly in the meanwhile. That ain't his fault, and it's clear that his assessment was that the departure was necessary, indeed consistent with his decade long instincts on Afghanistan.

It appears that our intelligence community largely thought that the fall of the government would take more time, we were not anticipating as rapid a fall, though we'd indeed told everyone to get out months ago (many ignored that warning). Nevertheless, we're executing a massive withdrawal pretty darn effectively at present, dwarfing what was done, for instance in the fall of Saigon.

There will be plenty to critique about this withdrawal, but I don't think it's at all partisan, much less childish, to look at the actual facts as to who was in charge at various points and the implications for the subsequent POTUS of the decisions made by his predecessors. That goes for Obama and Bush as well...decisions were made by each that had implications for their successors.

Was there a treaty ratified by congress? or an agreement in principle which Biden could have amended or broken? Trump was able to pull out of the Paris Climate Treaty, the Iran deal what are the differences?

[tech37]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics ... index.html

Maybe the Americans don’t want to leave their spouses? Who knows…..

I'm sure there are thousands and thousands in that position

"Who knows"... seems accurate.

The embassy (State Department) do not require Americans to register upon arrival or departure so there is no official manifest of citizens in-country. This is the case in most, if not all countries around the world with possibly a few exceptions in very dangerous locations. It is likely that citizens looking to depart need to contact State Department or present themselves at the airport with passport documentation in order to be admitted and then flown out.

In a country where we're involved in war? Let's see, I'd like to travel to France or I'd like to travel to Afghanistan...what difference could there be?

If accurate, that seems like dumb policy... for obvious reasons we're now seeing.

[jhu72]

Latest presser: Nice job BIden.....just dump it all on the military, expecting them to get it all done. After first pulling them out, then sending them back in, then have to work night and day to get them out by the 31st. As they have to turn people away........talk about mentally mind effing our soldiers.

Nice job leading the presser with a 3 Trillion Dollar spending deal, then talk about his boys at the G7 and UN are all cool with everything, then make it sound this effing debacle is just another day at the office. He's running scared of the Taliban.....UFB.

Who cut the deal with the Taliban and sent all of our guys home and told the Afghans to let all the Taliban prisoners out…. You want him to start another war? That will show them…

The treaty was FEB20,18 months ago, slick, nothing like waiting until the last minute, to eff over your own people.

youth, again, the 'team' you were riding effed it up royally...the only recourse for Biden would have been a re-escalation of the war, which he definitely wasn't going to do, having seen that such was fruitless in prior attempts.

There you go again with the partisan scoreboard card...worn out and childish.

So it seems you are no different than BIden, you too, would sit on a deadline for close to 18+ months, to only wait until the last minute to perform would should have been a calculated and precision exercise with contingencies, rather than what we witnessed with this frenetic and chaotic exercise that also ignored our allies, as noted in the treaty. Further more, mentally mind effing our military men and women...putting them in to yet another position of jeopardy, facing our own weapons this time, while adding another layer of mind effing stress they bring home. I would expect more from you, especially as you have shared your story of health over the years.

childish?

Biden has been in office 6 months, not 18 months. He didn't sign the treaty. He didn't ignore that the Taliban wasn't abiding by the treaty and try to accelerate departure even faster, with even less planning.

I've been clear, I thought that the original mistake was declaring a 100% departure from Afghanistan, and even worse giving a date certain. I thought ( but don't have the full analytical, intelligence insight) that a small international force could maintain a strategic foothold in Afghanistan, with a reasonably stable, if imperfect, government...I also thought, as Adm. Mullen points out (now), that any such could only succeed if corruption was rooted out and the gov't gained sufficient credibility and legitimacy.

I don't know whether that was ever actually going to work long term, and whether the costs would have been worth it, but that's what I thought.

But by the time Biden was elected, the situation on the ground was severely worse, and the odds of my preference being successfully resumed were far, far worse, given that the US had already made clear we weren't going to stay long term and the Taliban had moved strongly in the meanwhile. That ain't his fault, and it's clear that his assessment was that the departure was necessary, indeed consistent with his decade long instincts on Afghanistan.

It appears that our intelligence community largely thought that the fall of the government would take more time, we were not anticipating as rapid a fall, though we'd indeed told everyone to get out months ago (many ignored that warning). Nevertheless, we're executing a massive withdrawal pretty darn effectively at present, dwarfing what was done, for instance in the fall of Saigon.

There will be plenty to critique about this withdrawal, but I don't think it's at all partisan, much less childish, to look at the actual facts as to who was in charge at various points and the implications for the subsequent POTUS of the decisions made by his predecessors. That goes for Obama and Bush as well...decisions were made by each that had implications for their successors.

Was there a treaty ratified by congress? or an agreement in principle which Biden could have amended or broken? Trump was able to pull out of the Paris Climate Treaty, the Iran deal what are the differences?

... no one was shooting at us in Paris.

[RedFromMI]

I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences

https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/read ... 41358.html

So when people ask me if we made the right call getting out of Afghanistan in 2021, I answer truthfully: Absolutely not. The right call was getting out in 2002. 2003.

That is an enticing counterfactual, offered in hindsight. Things were not stable in 2003. AQ was still active with OBL still alive. Afghanistan was in civil war with the Taliban temporarily defeated, so long as we continued bombing them. Had we disengaged then, rather than staying long enough to decimate AQ & get OBL, there's no way to predict how things would have played out & what would come out of Afghanistan in the ensuing 18 years.

I share his contempt for the parasites in the financial sector who put his childhood home underwater.

Former ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder on Twitter:

There's a big fallacy behind the criticism of Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan--which is that the alternative to withdrawal was the status quo (as McConnell and other critics maintain). That's simply wrong.

The situation McConnell describes, of a stable Afghanistan maintained by 2,500 troops and no US casualties in a year, was about to change as a result of the February 2020 agreement between Trump and the Taliban.

Under that agreement, the Taliban agreed not to attack US forces so long as those troops (and all civilian contractors) left by May 1. In the intervening months, the Taliban had strengthened its position (in part because Trump had forced the Afghans to release 5,000 Taliban.

So when Biden came to office, the Taliban was at its strongest since its defeat in 2001 and US and NATO forces were slated to leave Afghanistan in 3 months. The Taliban had been degrading Afghan forces and preparing a major offensive after foreign troops had been withdrawn.

If Biden had reneged on the Trump deal, the Taliban would've resumed attacking US forces from a position of strength. To continue to support the Afghan government and security forces, the US would therefore have had to increase its military presence significantly.

So the choice facing Biden wasn't between withdrawal or an ideal status quo of keeping a few thousand troops who had suffered no casualties, as the critics maintain. It was between withdrawal or a major surge of troops to fight a strengthened Taliban.

Given that Biden had opposed the Obama surge in 2009 because he didn't think sending more troops would bring stability, let alone transform Afghanistan into a viable democracies, no one should have been surprised that he opted for withdrawal.

While Biden owns the consequence of his decision, which are now playing out, his critics should own up to the fact that the real alternative would have been a major escalation of a war that most Americans had long come to oppose.

To govern is to choose, as they say. Let's not pretend that the choice Biden and the government faced in Afghanistan was an easy one.

[youthathletics]

Latest presser: Nice job BIden.....just dump it all on the military, expecting them to get it all done. After first pulling them out, then sending them back in, then have to work night and day to get them out by the 31st. As they have to turn people away........talk about mentally mind effing our soldiers.

Nice job leading the presser with a 3 Trillion Dollar spending deal, then talk about his boys at the G7 and UN are all cool with everything, then make it sound this effing debacle is just another day at the office. He's running scared of the Taliban.....UFB.

Who cut the deal with the Taliban and sent all of our guys home and told the Afghans to let all the Taliban prisoners out…. You want him to start another war? That will show them…

The treaty was FEB20,18 months ago, slick, nothing like waiting until the last minute, to eff over your own people.

youth, again, the 'team' you were riding effed it up royally...the only recourse for Biden would have been a re-escalation of the war, which he definitely wasn't going to do, having seen that such was fruitless in prior attempts.

There you go again with the partisan scoreboard card...worn out and childish.

So it seems you are no different than BIden, you too, would sit on a deadline for close to 18+ months, to only wait until the last minute to perform would should have been a calculated and precision exercise with contingencies, rather than what we witnessed with this frenetic and chaotic exercise that also ignored our allies, as noted in the treaty. Further more, mentally mind effing our military men and women...putting them in to yet another position of jeopardy, facing our own weapons this time, while adding another layer of mind effing stress they bring home. I would expect more from you, especially as you have shared your story of health over the years.

childish?

Biden has been in office 6 months, not 18 months. He didn't sign the treaty. He didn't ignore that the Taliban wasn't abiding by the treaty and try to accelerate departure even faster, with even less planning.

I've been clear, I thought that the original mistake was declaring a 100% departure from Afghanistan, and even worse giving a date certain. I thought ( but don't have the full analytical, intelligence insight) that a small international force could maintain a strategic foothold in Afghanistan, with a reasonably stable, if imperfect, government...I also thought, as Adm. Mullen points out (now), that any such could only succeed if corruption was rooted out and the gov't gained sufficient credibility and legitimacy.

I don't know whether that was ever actually going to work long term, and whether the costs would have been worth it, but that's what I thought.

But by the time Biden was elected, the situation on the ground was severely worse, and the odds of my preference being successfully resumed were far, far worse, given that the US had already made clear we weren't going to stay long term and the Taliban had moved strongly in the meanwhile. That ain't his fault, and it's clear that his assessment was that the departure was necessary, indeed consistent with his decade long instincts on Afghanistan.

It appears that our intelligence community largely thought that the fall of the government would take more time, we were not anticipating as rapid a fall, though we'd indeed told everyone to get out months ago (many ignored that warning). Nevertheless, we're executing a massive withdrawal pretty darn effectively at present, dwarfing what was done, for instance in the fall of Saigon.

There will be plenty to critique about this withdrawal, but I don't think it's at all partisan, much less childish, to look at the actual facts as to who was in charge at various points and the implications for the subsequent POTUS of the decisions made by his predecessors. That goes for Obama and Bush as well...decisions were made by each that had implications for their successors.

You blame Trump at every turn, childish.....yes. The 18th month portion is fact, regardless of party in the office. Why did the Biden admin wait until the past minute, why no contingency plans, why scramble and eff our military men and women again. why lie to the public as called out by those on MTP this past Sunday, why screw our allies in the process. And Biden is suppose to be the smartest person in the room on Afghanistan, so he claimed...was he not sitting in the room with BHO for 8 years during all of this and learned absolutely nothing?

We all agree (for the most part) that getting the hell outta there was long overdue and the correct choice. Even BHO promised this by close of 2014.
All we can do now is pray for those involved...otherwise we have to compartmentalize the tragedy of this recent exercise.
And no, I am not blaming BHO at all for this.

[Kismet]

...It involved flying airplanes over enemy controlled territory with AA capability. Like the current situation, USA military personnel/equipment in potential war zone had the Soviets chosen to challenge. The operation also involved landing aircraft at Berlin Tempelhof Airport - at the height of the campaign, one plane landed every 45 seconds.

Minimal AA threat in Kabul. Terrorist threat at HKIA is the concern now.
1 US military airlift flight now departing every 45 minutes.
Getting outbound passengers inside the wire, sorting them out & vetting them, is the limiting factor.

Agreed. My apologies for going down the usual cradle military history rabbit hole. Lesson learned.

Also only in America, as we are trying to evacuate 1000s under various threats, that two US Congressmen (both vets) secretly fly in without permission to conduct "congressional oversight" on the Executive Branch on the tarmac taking up two valuable seats for their exit.