BUT LIKE JOSEPH BIDEN HAS SO MUCH FOREIGN EXPERIENCE OR SOMETHING

[sonatine]

https://freebeacon.com/national-secu...an-withdrawal/

some real fuckin solid points being scored by this dude.

like we evacuated bagram airfield apparently real early on in this process, meaning we couldnt use a strategically essential air field during the rest of the process.

like seriously i dont know what to make of that. im honestly starting to wonder if this process was deliberately bungled.

[JACKDANIELS]

idk maybe a humiliating defeat after 20 years will make it easier to get support for a new war somewhere else to prove usa is still #1

[Walter Sobchak]

idk maybe a humiliating defeat after 20 years will make it easier to get support for a new war somewhere else to prove usa is still #1

I hear Somalia is lovely this time of year.

[JACKDANIELS]

somalia is so 1990's walt gotta go for a big one iran or north korea

[JACKDANIELS]

time for your uncle joe to show how great and powerful and totally not senile he is

[Walter Sobchak]

somalia is so 1990's walt gotta go for a big one iran or north korea

Very possible. I was going for somewhere they could claim was a “limited engagement.”

Venezuela also seems possible, Trump was considering it.

[lol wow]

uhhh jace sidebar this is way more of a debacle than it had any right to be when i was dunking on you for ur adult in the room nonsense but also that polenta is now literally impossible to find coincidence?

[cleatus]

got 10 or more minutes? writings from a civilian lady that lived 2 years in Kandahar and more in Kabul.

https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/failing-states

[Walter Sobchak]

Even Republicans know it’s Trump’s fault. The only people who deny it are the Trump cultists.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/28/o...e=articleShare

Believing you’re uniquely capable of bending things to your will is practically a requirement for becoming president of the United States. But too often, in pursuit of such influence over foreign policy, presidents overemphasize the importance of personal diplomacy. Relationships among leaders can build trust — or destroy it — but presidents often overrate their ability to steer both allies and adversaries.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had built such a solid relationship that during the Reykjavik summit most of Reagan’s administration worried he would agree to an unverifiable elimination of nuclear weapons. Bill Clinton believed his personal diplomacy could deliver Palestinian statehood and Russian acceptance of NATO expansion. George W. Bush believed he looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and saw his soul, and Barack Obama believed he could persuade Mr. Putin it wasn’t in Russia’s interests to determine the outcome of the war in Syria.

But in both hubris and folly, none come close to matching Donald Trump. For someone who prided himself on his abilities as a dealmaker and displayed an “I alone can fix it” arrogance, the agreement he made with the Taliban is one of the most disgraceful diplomatic bargains on record. Coupled with President Biden’s mistakes in continuing the policy and botching its execution, the deal has now led to tragic consequences for Americans and our allies in Kabul.

Mr. Trump’s handling of Afghanistan is an object lesson for why presidents of both parties need to be better constrained by Congress and the public in their conduct of foreign policy.

Mr. Trump never believed Afghanistan was worth fighting for: as early as 2011 he advocated its abandonment. Once in office, his early infatuation with “my generals” gave the Pentagon latitude to dissuade the president from exactly the kind of rush to the exits we’re now seeing in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump wanted to abandon the war in Afghanistan, but he understood atavistically that it would damage him politically to have a terrorist attack or a Saigon comparison attached to his policy choices.

Thus the impetus for a negotiated settlement. The problem with Mr. Trump’s Taliban deal wasn’t that the administration turned to diplomacy. That was a sensible avenue out of the policy constraints. The problem was that the strongest state in the international order let itself be swindled by a terrorist organization. Because we so clearly wanted out of Afghanistan, we agreed to disreputable terms, and then proceeded to pretend that the Taliban were meeting even those.

Refer your friends to The New York Times.
They’ll enjoy our special rate of $1 (Cdn) a week.
Mr. Trump agreed to withdraw all coalition forces from Afghanistan in 14 months, end all military and contractor support to Afghan security forces and cease “intervening in its domestic affairs.” He forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters and relax economic sanctions. He agreed that the Taliban could continue to commit violence against the government we were there to support, against innocent people and against those who’d assisted our efforts to keep Americans safe. All the Taliban had to do was say they would stop targeting U.S. or coalition forces, not permit Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to use Afghan territory to threaten U.S. security and subsequently hold negotiations with the Afghan government.

Not only did the agreement have no inspection or enforcement mechanisms, but despite Mr. Trump’s claim that “If bad things happen, we’ll go back with a force like no one’s ever seen,” the administration made no attempt to enforce its terms. Trump’s own former national security adviser called it “a surrender agreement.”

Mr. Trump and his supporters clearly considered the deal a great success — until just days ago, the Republican National Committee had a web page heralding the success of Mr. Trump’s “historic peace agreement.” Really, the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban deserves opprobrium even greater than what it heaped on the Iran nuclear deal struck by the Obama administration.
Mr. Trump wasn’t unique among American presidents in the grandiose belief that he alone could somehow change behaviors of our enemies and adversaries. Ever since Theodore Roosevelt brought an end to the Russo-Japanese war and won the Nobel Peace Prize, most American presidents have found irresistible the siren call of personal diplomacy.

Instead of banking on other countries being charmed or persuaded that American leaders know their interests better than they do, presidents should return to the practice of persuading their fellow Americans of the merits of agreements with foreign powers. Congress can begin by reasserting its role in diplomacy and requiring specific authorizations for the use of military force rather than continuing to acquiesce to claims that existing executive authorizations can be endlessly expanded. It should refuse the shifting of funds previously authorized and appropriated for other purposes (Mr. Trump made such shifts to construct the border wall). It should reject foreign policy changes enacted by executive order rather than congressional approval, and it should force the Supreme Court to clarify the extent of the president’s war powers.

Agreements with foreign powers, whether states, international institutions or organizations like the Taliban, should be submitted to Congress for a vote. The best way to prevent catastrophic foreign policy mistakes is to require the 535 representatives of the American people to put their jobs on the line, become informed, and support, reject or modify a president’s program. Congress tried to slow or block Mr. Trump’s planned drawdown of U.S. forces. Members who supported the Taliban deal should be explaining why they thought the outcome would be different than the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan now. Apathy and unaccountability are the real enemies of good foreign policy. Presidents get around oversight by offering unilateral policy actions or claiming international agreements aren’t formal treaties. Congress shouldn’t let a president from either party get away with this.

Addressing foreign agreements as stand-alone votes would raise the profile and stakes even more. Supporting Mr. Trump’s Taliban agreement would have been — and should have been — a tough vote. There are reasonable arguments on the side of continuing the war and on the side of concluding it. America would be more secure today if Congress exerted its prerogatives more forcefully — both when Mr. Trump agreed to the Taliban deal, and when Mr. Biden continued it.

These are not partisan issues. They get at the heart of the constitutional separation of powers, a division that makes America strong and resilient. Restraining presidential fiat may mean that some foreign policy opportunities are missed, that some deals will remain out of reach. But it also insulates the president, and the American public, against bad deals by allowing for greater public scrutiny and oversight. As the debacle in Afghanistan shows, closer evaluation of Mr. Trump’s Taliban deal and of Mr. Biden’s withdrawal plans would have been preferable to the tragedy now unfolding.

[nightmarefish]

Bill has been giving consistent beat downs to the far left for the last year. I wish we had his equivalent on the right.

[sonatine]

oh.

[nightmarefish]

Even Republicans know it’s Trump’s fault. The only people who deny it are the Trump cultists.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/28/o...e=articleShare

Believing you’re uniquely capable of bending things to your will is practically a requirement for becoming president of the United States. But too often, in pursuit of such influence over foreign policy, presidents overemphasize the importance of personal diplomacy. Relationships among leaders can build trust — or destroy it — but presidents often overrate their ability to steer both allies and adversaries.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev had built such a solid relationship that during the Reykjavik summit most of Reagan’s administration worried he would agree to an unverifiable elimination of nuclear weapons. Bill Clinton believed his personal diplomacy could deliver Palestinian statehood and Russian acceptance of NATO expansion. George W. Bush believed he looked into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and saw his soul, and Barack Obama believed he could persuade Mr. Putin it wasn’t in Russia’s interests to determine the outcome of the war in Syria.

But in both hubris and folly, none come close to matching Donald Trump. For someone who prided himself on his abilities as a dealmaker and displayed an “I alone can fix it” arrogance, the agreement he made with the Taliban is one of the most disgraceful diplomatic bargains on record. Coupled with President Biden’s mistakes in continuing the policy and botching its execution, the deal has now led to tragic consequences for Americans and our allies in Kabul.

Mr. Trump’s handling of Afghanistan is an object lesson for why presidents of both parties need to be better constrained by Congress and the public in their conduct of foreign policy.

Mr. Trump never believed Afghanistan was worth fighting for: as early as 2011 he advocated its abandonment. Once in office, his early infatuation with “my generals” gave the Pentagon latitude to dissuade the president from exactly the kind of rush to the exits we’re now seeing in Afghanistan. Mr. Trump wanted to abandon the war in Afghanistan, but he understood atavistically that it would damage him politically to have a terrorist attack or a Saigon comparison attached to his policy choices.

Thus the impetus for a negotiated settlement. The problem with Mr. Trump’s Taliban deal wasn’t that the administration turned to diplomacy. That was a sensible avenue out of the policy constraints. The problem was that the strongest state in the international order let itself be swindled by a terrorist organization. Because we so clearly wanted out of Afghanistan, we agreed to disreputable terms, and then proceeded to pretend that the Taliban were meeting even those.

Refer your friends to The New York Times.
They’ll enjoy our special rate of $1 (Cdn) a week.
Mr. Trump agreed to withdraw all coalition forces from Afghanistan in 14 months, end all military and contractor support to Afghan security forces and cease “intervening in its domestic affairs.” He forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters and relax economic sanctions. He agreed that the Taliban could continue to commit violence against the government we were there to support, against innocent people and against those who’d assisted our efforts to keep Americans safe. All the Taliban had to do was say they would stop targeting U.S. or coalition forces, not permit Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to use Afghan territory to threaten U.S. security and subsequently hold negotiations with the Afghan government.

Not only did the agreement have no inspection or enforcement mechanisms, but despite Mr. Trump’s claim that “If bad things happen, we’ll go back with a force like no one’s ever seen,” the administration made no attempt to enforce its terms. Trump’s own former national security adviser called it “a surrender agreement.”

Mr. Trump and his supporters clearly considered the deal a great success — until just days ago, the Republican National Committee had a web page heralding the success of Mr. Trump’s “historic peace agreement.” Really, the Trump administration’s deal with the Taliban deserves opprobrium even greater than what it heaped on the Iran nuclear deal struck by the Obama administration.
Mr. Trump wasn’t unique among American presidents in the grandiose belief that he alone could somehow change behaviors of our enemies and adversaries. Ever since Theodore Roosevelt brought an end to the Russo-Japanese war and won the Nobel Peace Prize, most American presidents have found irresistible the siren call of personal diplomacy.

Instead of banking on other countries being charmed or persuaded that American leaders know their interests better than they do, presidents should return to the practice of persuading their fellow Americans of the merits of agreements with foreign powers. Congress can begin by reasserting its role in diplomacy and requiring specific authorizations for the use of military force rather than continuing to acquiesce to claims that existing executive authorizations can be endlessly expanded. It should refuse the shifting of funds previously authorized and appropriated for other purposes (Mr. Trump made such shifts to construct the border wall). It should reject foreign policy changes enacted by executive order rather than congressional approval, and it should force the Supreme Court to clarify the extent of the president’s war powers.

Agreements with foreign powers, whether states, international institutions or organizations like the Taliban, should be submitted to Congress for a vote. The best way to prevent catastrophic foreign policy mistakes is to require the 535 representatives of the American people to put their jobs on the line, become informed, and support, reject or modify a president’s program. Congress tried to slow or block Mr. Trump’s planned drawdown of U.S. forces. Members who supported the Taliban deal should be explaining why they thought the outcome would be different than the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan now. Apathy and unaccountability are the real enemies of good foreign policy. Presidents get around oversight by offering unilateral policy actions or claiming international agreements aren’t formal treaties. Congress shouldn’t let a president from either party get away with this.

Addressing foreign agreements as stand-alone votes would raise the profile and stakes even more. Supporting Mr. Trump’s Taliban agreement would have been — and should have been — a tough vote. There are reasonable arguments on the side of continuing the war and on the side of concluding it. America would be more secure today if Congress exerted its prerogatives more forcefully — both when Mr. Trump agreed to the Taliban deal, and when Mr. Biden continued it.

These are not partisan issues. They get at the heart of the constitutional separation of powers, a division that makes America strong and resilient. Restraining presidential fiat may mean that some foreign policy opportunities are missed, that some deals will remain out of reach. But it also insulates the president, and the American public, against bad deals by allowing for greater public scrutiny and oversight. As the debacle in Afghanistan shows, closer evaluation of Mr. Trump’s Taliban deal and of Mr. Biden’s withdrawal plans would have been preferable to the tragedy now unfolding.

When are you gonna stfu about Trump?

If this had happened during Trump’s Presidency you would have blamed Trump and you would have been right. You avoiding blaming Biden makes you look like a petulant child. You’re a big part of the problem in this country kiddo.

[Sanlmar]

Druff and others are curious about “why now?” in Afghanistan. I’d like to remove the simple and fruitless partisan politics behind Trump & Biden’s decision. Perhaps have a big boy discussion. May not work.

Perhaps this line of thought warrants its own thread. I’ll abide by OP’s decision.

I could riff endlessly and yet I am not sure how to begin. Let’s start here:

Russia and China Edge Closer to Each Other With Joint Military Exercises
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/bu...ercises-192018

Reaping the windfall of their ongoing cooperation in Afghanistan, Russia, and China seek to further deepen their military ties.

Chinese and Russian forces conducted the ZAPAD/INTERACTION-2021 joint drills earlier this month at a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) base in West China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

The drills involve as many as 13,000 troops and 400 pieces of military hardware, including 200 pieces of armor, 90 artillery units, and 100 aircraft. The exercises notably featured China’s fifth-generation J-20 stealth fighter jet, marking the first time that the fighter participated in joint exercises. The Russian side was represented by forces from the country’s Eastern Military District, bringing air defense systems, motorized divisions, and Su-30SM fighter jets.

What the article doesn’t get into is the fact that servicemen were cross training on each country’s equipment. I find that astounding.

In my mind this is relevant because our next act will be Taiwan. China has the conventional military advantage over us in that region. We have the nuclear advantage. China is closing that gap. A partnership with Russia changes everything. Most interesting is the prospect of conducting wars on two fronts. Something like Russian/Eastern Europe’s Ukraine or Belarus and then China/Taiwan.

Regardless, the thought that the US would have military superiority vs that Eurasian combo is foolishness. We are entering a new chapter in our country and full attention is demanded.

Of course, there is a solution to Taiwan. You just aren’t gonna like it.

Anyway if we are looking to cut the military budget - fighting on multiple fronts weren’t in Trump’s cards and would be guaranteed further folly.

[Sanlmar]

war is the most efficient means of consumption yet devised
- Dick Cheney



Lol. I think it was him

[Sanlmar]

Meanwhile, in a $12m mansion on Martha's Vineyard



For you Walter
Raytheon Technologies Corp. stock rises Wednesday, outperforms market


Buckle up

[Sanlmar]

Taliban now has 3x as many attack helicopters as the UK and now has the 4th largest military helicopter fleet in the world.


Cover me while I reload.

[country978]

Druff and others are curious about “why now?” in Afghanistan. I’d like to remove the simple and fruitless partisan politics behind Trump & Biden’s decision. Perhaps have a big boy discussion. May not work.

Perhaps this line of thought warrants its own thread. I’ll abide by OP’s decision.

I could riff endlessly and yet I am not sure how to begin. Let’s start here:

Russia and China Edge Closer to Each Other With Joint Military Exercises
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/bu...ercises-192018

Reaping the windfall of their ongoing cooperation in Afghanistan, Russia, and China seek to further deepen their military ties.

Chinese and Russian forces conducted the ZAPAD/INTERACTION-2021 joint drills earlier this month at a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) base in West China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

The drills involve as many as 13,000 troops and 400 pieces of military hardware, including 200 pieces of armor, 90 artillery units, and 100 aircraft. The exercises notably featured China’s fifth-generation J-20 stealth fighter jet, marking the first time that the fighter participated in joint exercises. The Russian side was represented by forces from the country’s Eastern Military District, bringing air defense systems, motorized divisions, and Su-30SM fighter jets.

What the article doesn’t get into is the fact that servicemen were cross training on each country’s equipment. I find that astounding.

In my mind this is relevant because our next act will be Taiwan. China has the conventional military advantage over us in that region. We have the nuclear advantage. China is closing that gap. A partnership with Russia changes everything. Most interesting is the prospect of conducting wars on two fronts. Something like Russian/Eastern Europe’s Ukraine or Belarus and then China/Taiwan.

Regardless, the thought that the US would have military superiority vs that Eurasian combo is foolishness. We are entering a new chapter in our country and full attention is demanded.

Of course, there is a solution to Taiwan. You just aren’t gonna like it.

Anyway if we are looking to cut the military budget - fighting on multiple fronts weren’t in Trump’s cards and would be guaranteed further folly.

I appreciate these posts from you a lot. Even though you're correct that full attention is demanded society in general here in America really cant even give partial attention. I don't think it is much of a priority for anyone. Most everyone I know and talk to is distracted by whatever is right in front of them at the moment. Far too pre occupied with whatever issues the day might bring to consider the behavior and ethics of those they voted for. One of these days in America all of our neglect and lack of true leadership is coming home to roost. Uncle Joe is old and tired. I always hope to be wrong about these fears.

[Walter Sobchak]

Taliban now has 3x as many attack helicopters as the UK and now has the 4th largest military helicopter fleet in the world.


Cover me while I reload.

Not too concerned. They need training and ammo, and choppers have limited range.

[nightmarefish]

Taliban now has 3x as many attack helicopters as the UK and now has the 4th largest military helicopter fleet in the world.


Cover me while I reload.

Not too concerned. They need training and ammo, and choppers have limited range.

So you’re cool with it? No fuck ups to see or mention here I guess.

[Sanlmar]

Taliban now has 3x as many attack helicopters as the UK and now has the 4th largest military helicopter fleet in the world.


Cover me while I reload.

Not too concerned. They need training and ammo, and choppers have limited range.

Who is concerned? Do I think they are gonna use ‘em against some girls school? The Taliban won. It’s just an interesting stat. You bought a fuck-ton of hardware.

Anyway, if they need help Pakistan can fill in the gaps.