The Biden administration (was: The NEW 2020 Election Thread)

[PermissionToLand]

Heh heh heh...about that:

https://www.salon.com/2021/07/23/matt-gaetz-and-mtgs-new-fundraising-committee-is-losing-money-big-time_partner/

They've lost massive amounts of money.

Sadly, money is the one thing the billionaires backing them can afford to lose. Their goal of poisoning the discourse and pushing the overton window ever rightward continues.

[tim_m]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/567523-gaetz-associate-providing-app-transactions-photos-videos-to

Looks like the other shoe is going to fall.

[ITARocker]

Wp in afghanistan, another gift for europe…

[Dr. Blutarsky]

I know this thread is pretty much all Biden fans at this point, but you have to admit he didn't handle the Afghanistan withdrawal very well.  Its like Saigon with different aircraft.

[PermissionToLand]

I know this thread is pretty much all Biden fans at this point, but you have to admit he didn't handle the Afghanistan withdrawal very well.  Its like Saigon with different aircraft.

Well, well, well, look who pokes his head back in when he thinks he can get a convenient partisan shot in. Hides in his hole when Trump's brownshirts are storming the capitol, though. What makes you think anyone takes a word you say seriously when you've so thoroughly discredited yourself?

BTW, I love how you open with a little victim role-playing just to set up that framing like your hero Tucker Carlson. Who, coincidentally, is also the hero of white supremacists. You sure seem to love their tactics...

https://eand.co/why-fascists-never-think-theyre-fascists-c4156e2f72da

So what you're saying is that Trump didn't actually have a plan for leaving when he set the date?

[pilferk]

I know this thread is pretty much all Biden fans at this point, but you have to admit he didn't handle the Afghanistan withdrawal very well.  Its like Saigon with different aircraft.

Still in the cult, eh?  Still think the election was stolen from Trump and there was mass voter fraud?

Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February of 2020. The US were left with a nearly untenable (and unextractable) time line of removing all troops by May of 2021.

TRUMP, just before leaving office, reduced troop numbers down to 2500.

Biden inherited a deadline with ZERO plan to remove remaining troops AND get people and resources out.

Was his response perfect? Hell no.  But he was also forced to play a SUPER shitty hand by the previous administration, and left with a super shitty strategic position on the ground, mostly because of the provisions of the treaty (which left the Taliban with superior military positioning and strength, right before withdrawal had to occur).

The leader of that previous administration, not 4 months ago, was crowing about how removing troops was all his doing and that, while the current administration wanted to back out and change time tables, they couldn't. Because his administration had made it VERY difficult to waiver from the deadlines in the peace treaty. He was literally BEGGING for credit for the situation in Afghanistan.

And two months ago? Trump said:

“I wish Joe Biden wouldn't use September 11 as the date to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, for two reasons,” Trump said in a statement at the time. “First, we can and should get out earlier. Nineteen years is enough, in fact, far too much and way too long.”

To not acknowledge all that, and try to lay the mess entirely at the feet of Biden, is just more evidence of your bias.  All you did  here, once again, was point out your own bias and how shitty a president Trump was. Thanks, but we already knew both those things.

In addition, it didn't help that all those forces we trained dropped their weapons and ran at the first sight of the Taliban.  The US spent billions training and equiping those folks to defend their own country so we could leave.  We left, and they folded like cheap suits. Biden had NOTHING to do with that.

There have been a number of posts in this very thread (and lots of talk from Trump supporters) they they want out of all these foreign wars.  That's fine.....but now to bitch about the repercussions?  What did you all think was going to happen, given what Trump put in place?  The only remarkable bit of what happened was how fast it happened.

To be clear: I don't agree with everything Biden did in the run up to leaving.  He made significant logistic errors, thinking that Afghan troops would be more of a deterrent.  He didn't get civilians out quickly enough.  He didn't have an expedited visa program in place (and again, some of this falls on Trump for dismantling that infrastructure...but Biden should have know this) months ago.  But to try to blame him for the whole mess?  That's cult induced hypocrisy.

On top of that, this whole thing is a gift given by GWB, who decided to make an anti-terrorism mission into nation building.   A good portion of the blame for this mess falls squarely on his shoulders.

[tim_m]

There's plenty of blame to go around for the last 4 presidents. They all made mistakes. This was Trump's deal he made with the Taliban. He should've included the government in the peace talks. He shouldn't have let 5k Taliban prisoners out without anything in return. One of them is now declared himself president.  We had to get our though, this needed to end. It was going to be bad no matter who the president was. I give kudos to Biden for following through and standing by his decision. He took responsibility. The buck stops here. I will not pass this on to a fifth president. I accept the criticism. Trump would be blaming the generals or someone. All 4 presidents deserve blame. Bush for getting us in, Obama for the surge. Trump for making a terrible deal, and Biden for not doing a better job getting all the people out thinking the Afghan army would put up more of a fight. Everyone wanted out of the war on both sides, but they're only going after Biden on the right. I didn't hear shit from them when Trump made this deaf and started the withdrawal. Had Biden gone back on the deal they'd be attacking him for endless wars, the Taliban would be targeting our troops. This was going to be bad period.

[PermissionToLand]

It's also pretty rich to hear faux concern for the Afghan people from supporters of the Muslim ban and Trump's rejection of refugees at large.

He shouldn't have let 5k Taliban prisoners out without anything in return.

It says a lot that the left wing media never really attacked Trump over that, whereas we all KNOW the right wing media and politicians would be excoriating Obama or Biden over such a move. Just look at how they propagandized over the release of frozen funds belonging to Iran. Trump repeated his lies about that deal constantly on the campaign trail.

[damnthehaters]

I know this thread is pretty much all Biden fans at this point, but you have to admit he didn't handle the Afghanistan withdrawal very well.  Its like Saigon with different aircraft.

Yeah it’s like 4-5 guys just touching each other.  As soon as someone with a different opinion chimes in….the gang bang starts.  So pathetic.  That’s why it’s only these guys left.  Nobody needs to hear their shit anymore and don’t need to be bullied.  Jarmo is trash for allowing it.  

 “But Trump….”…🙄😒.  The way Biden has handled this has absolutely nothing to do with Trump.  Nothing.  

I see Pilferk is still writing his essays to try and come off as smart.   The smartest people talk the least buddy …👍🏻

[jarmo]

LOL, trash.






/jarmo

[PermissionToLand]

Yeah it’s like 4-5 guys just touching each other.  As soon as someone with a different opinion chimes in….the gang bang starts.  So pathetic.  That’s why it’s only these guys left.  Nobody needs to hear their shit anymore and don’t need to be bullied.  Jarmo is trash for allowing it.

You literally sound like a jilted lover. You have sour grapes because you can't defend your positions logically. The only "pathetic" thing is you coming back just to gripe and toss insults because you still can't let it go.

Please grow up.

“But Trump….”…🙄😒.  The way Biden has handled this has absolutely nothing to do with Trump.  Nothing.

Strawmanning as always. Nobody blamed Trump for the execution. However it's a fact that Trump made the agreement with the Taliban and set it in motion in ways that restricted Biden's options. I know nuance is hard for you.

I see Pilferk is still writing his essays to try and come off as smart.   The smartest people talk the least buddy …👍🏻

Yeah, that's why academic research documents never go beyond 1 page!   

These kind of anti-intellectual arguments are why you get served constantly in here.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

I know this thread is pretty much all Biden fans at this point, but you have to admit he didn't handle the Afghanistan withdrawal very well.  Its like Saigon with different aircraft.

Yeah it’s like 4-5 guys just touching each other.  As soon as someone with a different opinion chimes in….the gang bang starts.  So pathetic.  That’s why it’s only these guys left.  Nobody needs to hear their shit anymore and don’t need to be bullied.  Jarmo is trash for allowing it.  

 “But Trump….”…🙄😒.  The way Biden has handled this has absolutely nothing to do with Trump.  Nothing.  

I see Pilferk is still writing his essays to try and come off as smart.   The smartest people talk the least buddy …👍🏻

It used to be a good debate around here, then it turned into the HTGTH unfinished basement. Well, I guess if you're going to have a gangbang, it isn't going to happen in the formal living room 

Trump agreed to a conditional withdrawal with the Taliban and Biden executed an unconditional withdrawal. Trump did made a mistake when he didn't include the Afghan govt in on the deal, but in hindsight they haven't been very impressive considering the billions we poured into it. That was an error that runs across multiple US administrations of both parties.

Even a lot of democrats have turned on Biden regarding how he has handled it.   Kamala is staying as far away as possible from this mess. 

Biden even lost CNN over the Afghanistan withdrawal 

[tim_m]

Trump also released the 5k prisoners, one who's now the president of Afghanistan. Several were involved in the car bomb. Plenty of blame to go around.

[PermissionToLand]

Biden even lost CNN over the Afghanistan withdrawal  

It's amusing how little you even care about your own credibility.

Meanwhile, the "anti-cancel culture", "anti-authoritarianism" and "free speech" warriors just cancelled a school principal for ... being in an interracial marriage and teaching American history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O99c625kv8Y

And they still pretend to not be racist. Incredible.

This is the extremism we're dealing with. They want us to focus on the largely unavoidable externalities of ending their pointless forever war so we don't notice they are trying to indoctrinate our children and rewrite history.

Never mind their attacks on Roe V Wade. You wanna play the game of limiting a constitutional right until it can't reasonably be exercised? Okay, you opened Pandora's box so now we can regulate the shit out of guns until every single shop and manufacturer shuts down because they can't operate in the environment. You're to blame for opening that box. In fact, your decades of bending and circumventing the rules are going to come back to bite you in the ass in more ways than one. I don't want to hear you whine about court packing when you stole a seat. Kick rocks.

[PermissionToLand]

Trump also released the 5k prisoners, one who's now the president of Afghanistan. Several were involved in the car bomb. Plenty of blame to go around.

Remember the frothing rage from the right wing propagandists when Obama made a deal to exchange prisoners?

[pilferk]

Trump agreed to a conditional withdrawal with the Taliban and Biden executed an unconditional withdrawal.

Not really.

Biden followed the tenets of the treaty, right up until negotiations broke down with the government factions and the Taliban...which Trumps policies undermined.  The treaty signed by Trump and the treaty we were obligated to comply with didn't leave many options.  Biden negotiated a slightly extended timeline (Aug instead of April), hoping those negotiations would eventually gain traction, for the Taliban (basically) to comply with those tenets, and so the US could TRY to verify compliance, and to get everything in place.  That never happened, largely because the Taliban was given military superiority in the treaty and had zero reason to negotiate.  The Afghani government, by contrast, was given zero leverage to foster negotiations.

To be clear: Biden inherited a terrible treaty, with hard to verify compliance guidelines, troops already drawn down to a level that wouldn't let them verify or enforce those tenets OR protect an evac effectively (which, given the treaty/troop draw down, would have to mean Trump trusted the Taliban to comply (they didn't) or to mean he didn't care about compliance and was just using the treaty as smoke screen to pull everyone out), an undermined government with no negotiating power, and a foe granted military superiority by the self same treaty.

The Biden administration was also VERY clear about their timeline, encouraging Americans to leave as early as possible, back in April.  Those (non-essential) people on the ground didn't listen.  They, too, figured that evac would be peaceful (despite warnings) and that they could push until August.  

This administration also asked Congress to fix the e-visa process back in April (a problem created by a Republican Congress and Republican Administration).  It took Congress (largely due to Republican obstruction) til mid-July to finish that process...which was too late.  At that point, the new system was overwhelmed (again, a Biden mistake....they should have anticipated and staffed for this) with requests and couldn't process them fast enough.

Biden's logistics certainly sucked.  Some of that was him and his administration, some was the fact there were not enough troops left to defend a more regulated withdrawal (Trump dropped troop levels just before he left office to only 2500), some of it was the Afghan trained troops folding like cheap suits, and some of it was a (Republican created) mess of an emergency visa process that wasn't fixed til July (by the Democratic congress).

Despite all that, the administration ended up pulling off the largest mass evacuation in the history of the world.  It wasn't perfect, it wasn't pretty, and there were terrible and unfortunate (and probably avoidable, with responsibility falling on both Trump and Biden) losses.

There is MORE than enough blame to go around.  I will say again: Trying to lay the whole mess, or even most of the mess, at the feet of Biden (or any one administration) is partisan hackary, hypocrisy, and straight up willful ignorance.  Biden was dealt a shitty hand from the get go, mostly from Republican Administrations and Republican Congress, and then played it poorly.

This is a US failure, not a Biden failure.

Trump did made a mistake when he didn't include the Afghan govt in on the deal, but in hindsight they haven't been very impressive considering the billions we poured into it. That was an error that runs across multiple US administrations of both parties.

GWB started the issue, created the constructs of nation building, and the training process.  Obama maintained those processes...that's true.  And so did Trump.  Biden is surely not to blame for any of that.  It's well documented that he was not a fan of how Obama handled Afghanistan.

Biden trusted those Afghani troops to hold the line.  You can say that was optimistic, and I'll agree.  But, beyond that, he didn't have much in the way of backup options.  Putting 25k troops on the ground, which was likely the ONLY way to succeed, just wasn't an option.  Not politically, not logistically, and not within the confines of the treaty that Trump signed. 2500 troops to protect and effect a complete evac of the country isn't enough.  

Trump further exacerbated the issue by signing that treaty for withdrawal who's conditions were very hard to verify (wait, wasn't that his objection to the Iran treaty) and legitimized the Taliban while simultaneously deligitimizing the existing government. What message does that send to the Afghani forces? That treaty fostered an environment that very much created this mess.  As did his freeing Taliban leadership from prison...and those prisoners have had a pretty big impact on the withdrawal.

Again, this all started with Bush converting an anti-terrorism mission to nation building.  Those missions have very often not gone well.  Both sides should have known this was a bad idea.

Even a lot of democrats have turned on Biden regarding how he has handled it.   Kamala is staying as far away as possible from this mess.  

Almost like they're not mindless robots who would support someone regardless of any mistakes they make (or insurrections they foster, or pandemics they mismanage or...well, you get the picture) simply because of their name, or the letter after their name.  Weird, eh?

What's ironic and laden with hypocrisy is the first lines of your post when combined with the actual discussion in this thread, where you have people reasonably discussing the nuances and failings of Biden WITHOUT the "fraidy cat" conservatives, who disappeared into the woodwork when their boi fostered insurrection and a lie about voter fraud and a stolen election.

And didn't come back until they thought they could score easy points.....which turned out to be not so easy (because they're getting schooled by actual history, again).

It seems pretty obvious who is capable of objective, substantive discussion and who isn't.

Biden even lost CNN over the Afghanistan withdrawal  

See above.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

Trump also released the 5k prisoners, one who's now the president of Afghanistan. Several were involved in the car bomb. Plenty of blame to go around.

No one is coming out of this smelling like roses. Trump made mistakes, Obama made mistakes Bush 43 made mistakes and then there were the mistakes made ny our current administration's decisions regarding how we left Afghanistan. 

 We find ourselves in the same situation we were in pre 9/11 except the Taliban have a lot of nice new military equipment including an Air Force.  I very much hope there is some truth to the reports  that a lot of it was disabled before they got their hands on it.
 

[Dr. Blutarsky]

Biden even lost CNN over the Afghanistan withdrawal  

It's amusing how little you even care about your own credibility.

Meanwhile, the "anti-cancel culture", "anti-authoritarianism" and "free speech" warriors just cancelled a school principal for ... being in an interracial marriage and teaching American history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O99c625kv8Y

And they still pretend to not be racist. Incredible.

This is the extremism we're dealing with. They want us to focus on the largely unavoidable externalities of ending their pointless forever war so we don't notice they are trying to indoctrinate our children and rewrite history.

Never mind their attacks on Roe V Wade. You wanna play the game of limiting a constitutional right until it can't reasonably be exercised? Okay, you opened Pandora's box so now we can regulate the shit out of guns until every single shop and manufacturer shuts down because they can't operate in the environment. You're to blame for opening that box. In fact, your decades of bending and circumventing the rules are going to come back to bite you in the ass in more ways than one. I don't want to hear you whine about court packing when you stole a seat. Kick rocks.

The right doesn't have a hivemind. ( Neither does the left). Not sure where you're going with your domestic issues tangent.  But if you want to know my take on Roe VS Wade, for example , I believe there is a middle ground that neither side can seem to meet at over it like make abortion illegal if the unborn child has any chance of being viable.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

Trump agreed to a conditional withdrawal with the Taliban and Biden executed an unconditional withdrawal.

Not really.

Biden followed the tenets of the treaty, right up until negotiations broke down with the government factions and the Taliban...which Trumps policies undermined.  The treaty signed by Trump and the treaty we were obligated to comply with didn't leave many options.  Biden negotiated a slightly extended timeline (Aug instead of April), hoping those negotiations would eventually gain traction, for the Taliban (basically) to comply with those tenets, and so the US could TRY to verify compliance, and to get everything in place.  That never happened, largely because the Taliban was given military superiority in the treaty and had zero reason to negotiate.  The Afghani government, by contrast, was given zero leverage to foster negotiations.

To be clear: Biden inherited a terrible treaty, with hard to verify compliance guidelines, troops already drawn down to a level that wouldn't let them verify or enforce those tenets OR protect an evac effectively (which, given the treaty/troop draw down, would have to mean Trump trusted the Taliban to comply (they didn't) or to mean he didn't care about compliance and was just using the treaty as smoke screen to pull everyone out), an undermined government with no negotiating power, and a foe granted military superiority by the self same treaty.

The Biden administration was also VERY clear about their timeline, encouraging Americans to leave as early as possible, back in April.  Those (non-essential) people on the ground didn't listen.  They, too, figured that evac would be peaceful (despite warnings) and that they could push until August.  

This administration also asked Congress to fix the e-visa process back in April (a problem created by a Republican Congress and Republican Administration).  It took Congress (largely due to Republican obstruction) til mid-July to finish that process...which was too late.  At that point, the new system was overwhelmed (again, a Biden mistake....they should have anticipated and staffed for this) with requests and couldn't process them fast enough.

Biden's logistics certainly sucked.  Some of that was him and his administration, some was the fact there were not enough troops left to defend a more regulated withdrawal (Trump dropped troop levels just before he left office to only 2500), some of it was the Afghan trained troops folding like cheap suits, and some of it was a (Republican created) mess of an emergency visa process that wasn't fixed til July (by the Democratic congress).

Despite all that, the administration ended up pulling off the largest mass evacuation in the history of the world.  It wasn't perfect, it wasn't pretty, and there were terrible and unfortunate (and probably avoidable, with responsibility falling on both Trump and Biden) losses.

There is MORE than enough blame to go around.  I will say again: Trying to lay the whole mess, or even most of the mess, at the feet of Biden (or any one administration) is partisan hackary, hypocrisy, and straight up willful ignorance.  Biden was dealt a shitty hand from the get go, mostly from Republican Administrations and Republican Congress, and then played it poorly.

This is a US failure, not a Biden failure.

Trump did made a mistake when he didn't include the Afghan govt in on the deal, but in hindsight they haven't been very impressive considering the billions we poured into it. That was an error that runs across multiple US administrations of both parties.

GWB started the issue, created the constructs of nation building, and the training process.  Obama maintained those processes...that's true.  And so did Trump.  Biden is surely not to blame for any of that.  It's well documented that he was not a fan of how Obama handled Afghanistan.

Biden trusted those Afghani troops to hold the line.  You can say that was optimistic, and I'll agree.  But, beyond that, he didn't have much in the way of backup options.  Putting 25k troops on the ground, which was likely the ONLY way to succeed, just wasn't an option.  Not politically, not logistically, and not within the confines of the treaty that Trump signed. 2500 troops to protect and effect a complete evac of the country isn't enough.  

Trump further exacerbated the issue by signing that treaty for withdrawal who's conditions were very hard to verify (wait, wasn't that his objection to the Iran treaty) and legitimized the Taliban while simultaneously deligitimizing the existing government. What message does that send to the Afghani forces? That treaty fostered an environment that very much created this mess.  As did his freeing Taliban leadership from prison...and those prisoners have had a pretty big impact on the withdrawal.

Again, this all started with Bush converting an anti-terrorism mission to nation building.  Those missions have very often not gone well.  Both sides should have known this was a bad idea.

Even a lot of democrats have turned on Biden regarding how he has handled it.   Kamala is staying as far away as possible from this mess.  

Almost like they're not mindless robots who would support someone regardless of any mistakes they make (or insurrections they foster, or pandemics they mismanage or...well, you get the picture) simply because of their name, or the letter after their name.  Weird, eh?

What's ironic and laden with hypocrisy is the first lines of your post when combined with the actual discussion in this thread, where you have people reasonably discussing the nuances and failings of Biden WITHOUT the "fraidy cat" conservatives, who disappeared into the woodwork when their boi fostered insurrection and a lie about voter fraud and a stolen election.

And didn't come back until they thought they could score easy points.....which turned out to be not so easy (because they're getting schooled by actual history, again).

It seems pretty obvious who is capable of objective, substantive discussion and who isn't.

Biden even lost CNN over the Afghanistan withdrawal  

See above.

No one will ever accuse you of being short and sweet.

Where to start with this mess....... 

[tim_m]

Trump also released the 5k prisoners, one who's now the president of Afghanistan. Several were involved in the car bomb. Plenty of blame to go around.

No one is coming out of this smelling like roses. Trump made mistakes, Obama made mistakes Bush 43 made mistakes and then there were the mistakes made ny our current administration's decisions regarding how we left Afghanistan. 

 We find ourselves in the same situation we were in pre 9/11 except the Taliban have a lot of nice new military equipment including an Air Force.  I very much hope there is some truth to the reports  that a lot of it was disabled before they got their hands on it.
 

They don't have the stuff that belonged to DOD. That was all disabled. What they have is the older equipment that was given to the Afghan army to defend themselves, but of course we all know they cut and run.