Kabul Afghanistan is Falling to the Taliban

[Syne]

Biden set the Aug 31st deadline. He owns that.

And so? What's so bad about this deadline? If anything it hurries the evacuation to go faster and so prevents exposure of crowds at the airport gates to possible attacks by Isis. It also averts any possible interference by the Taliban since they agree with it. He's making the best of a bad situation. Nobody knew the Afghan military  would surrender. Nobody expected the Taliban to take over Kabul so quickly.

At some point you need to quit living under a rock. Like when Democrat politicians and our European allies all agree that Biden has royally bungled this withdrawal.

Hurrying a withdrawal by removing military, who had control of better evacuation points, before civilians is criminally incompetent. Biden told the military that they could only keep 300-400 troops until Aug 31st, leaving them a choice of whether to protect that airbase or the embassy. Not wanting to leave US citizens without protection, it was a catch-22, forcing them to prematurely abandon the airbase, as they knew those citizens weren't likely to make it out of Kabul to the airbase, 1 1/2 hours away.

A deadline was pointless, as the US hasn't been on a war footing in Afghanistan for about a decade now, and we're giving up our only airbase in the region.

"Faster?" Our allies and innocent Afghans (100 in the last bombing) are currently dying, women who haven't known anything but US protected freedom being made sex slaves, and the US gave the Taliban a list of US citizens, green card holders, and allies (basically a kill list). That's some heartless shit.

Guess what, the gate that was bombed is still packed with people seeking to flee. That's how desperate they are, that they'd knowingly risk the site of a terrorist bombing the day before. An attack that happened before Biden's self-imposed deadline.

Biden created the bad situation. And all of the military advisors told him that this would happen. The Afghan military was still dependent on the US for air support. They weren't prepared to fight guerilla tactics without air superiority.

You can put your head back up your ass now, as I seriously doubt you're capable of learning anything. Especially the gut-wrenching human cost to Biden's whim.

[Zinjanthropos]

Can a president/CIC be impeached for poor decisions that cost innocent and especially US lives, when it’s just an evacuation. Sure as hell if it were Trump, Dems would be calling for his head. Heard Biden ignored military advice....was it strategy from the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

[Syne]

Biden ignored the advice of the Joint Chiefs, the intelligence community, etc..

The president’s top generals, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley, urged Mr. Biden to keep a force of about 2,500 troops, the size he inherited, while seeking a peace agreement between warring Afghan factions, to help maintain stability. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who previously served as a military commander in the region, said a full withdrawal wouldn’t provide any insurance against instability.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-wante...1629214842


Reports suggest that the intelligence community by July was issuing reports warning about the potential domino effect throughout Afghanistan should the United States withdraw its troops. Analysts seem to have gotten the “how” right in some respects, if not the “when.”

The New York Times reported that by July, “many intelligence reports grew more pessimistic, questioning whether any Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on in Kabul, the capital.”

“Intelligence agencies predicted that should the Taliban seize cities, a cascading collapse could happen rapidly and the Afghan security forces were at high risk of falling apart,” the Times reported, adding that it was unclear whether other intelligence assessments around that time were more optimistic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...ghanistan/


The military spent more than a decade urging three different American presidents to stay in Afghanistan. With President Joe Biden’s decision this week to withdraw all U.S. forces by Sept. 11, they finally lost the battle.
...
As Biden weighed a full exit from the country this spring, top military leaders advocated for keeping a small U.S. presence on the ground made up primarily of special operations forces and paramilitary advisers, arguing that a force of a few thousand troops was needed to keep the Taliban in check and prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a haven for terrorists, according to nine former and current U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14...tan-481556

[Zinjanthropos]

Allowing terrorists to once again mobilize and be a legitimate threat to US citizens worldwide is in itself, high treason in my books. The duty of govt to protect its citizens has not been carried out. Maybe I’m being too harsh on Joe but can’t have Casper Milquetoast running the military.

High treason...Cambridge dictionary .. the committing of a crime that seriously threatens the safety of your country

[Syne]

I agree. At the very least, it's a treasonous dereliction of duty.

The Democrats who control the House and Senate will not impeach Joe, no matter what he does.

[Yazata]

Last numbers I saw from Thursday's attack are 13 dead American military and roughly 95 dead Afghans. (There may be more dead Afghans if more injured die in the hospitals and if dead were removed by their families and never officially counted.) But despite the deaths, there are still crowds at the airport gates. Unclear if any of them are getting inside although US evacuation flights are still departing at a pretty fast pace.

The British have announced that they will not be accepting any more evacuees and will only be processing those already within the gates. Presumably that is what was happening today. Then Saturday and Sunday will be devoted to extracting the approx 600 British soldiers.

By Monday it will just be Americans at the airport and hopefully they will all be out by the Taliban's deadline on Tuesday night. The British are winding down and the Canadians and all of the Europeans apart from the UK have already halted and pulled out.

So it sounds like the evacuation is entering into its last phase. Less than 100 hours to go.

[Syne]

Unclear if any of them are getting inside although US evacuation flights are still departing at a pretty fast pace.

Last I read, between slow evacuee processing and threats on the ground, most flights are leaving almost empty.

[Zinjanthropos]

I suppose those Afghans who don’t have the will to fight the Taliban are going to find their missing will real soon when they’re recruited by the new regime to engage ISIS. Would be ironic if some day the Taliban asks for US military assistance. Or will Taliban & ISIS unite to kill some infidels?

[Magical Realist]

Biden set the Aug 31st deadline. He owns that.

And so? What's so bad about this deadline? If anything it hurries the evacuation to go faster and so prevents exposure of crowds at the airport gates to possible attacks by Isis. It also averts any possible interference by the Taliban since they agree with it. He's making the best of a bad situation. Nobody knew the Afghan military  would surrender. Nobody expected the Taliban to take over Kabul so quickly.

At some point you need to quit living under a rock. Like when Democrat politicians and our European allies all agree that Biden has royally bungled this withdrawal.

Hurrying a withdrawal by removing military, who had control of better evacuation points, before civilians is criminally incompetent. Biden told the military that they could only keep 300-400 troops until Aug 31st, leaving them a choice of whether to protect that airbase or the embassy. Not wanting to leave US citizens without protection, it was a catch-22, forcing them to prematurely abandon the airbase, as they knew those citizens weren't likely to make it out of Kabul to the airbase,  1 1/2 hours away.

A deadline was pointless, as the US hasn't been on a war footing in Afghanistan for about a decade now, and we're giving up our only airbase in the region.

"Faster?" Our allies and innocent Afghans (100 in the last bombing) are currently dying, women who haven't known anything but US protected freedom being made sex slaves, and the US gave the Taliban a list of US citizens, green card holders, and allies (basically a kill list). That's some heartless shit.

Guess what, the gate that was bombed is still packed with people seeking to flee. That's how desperate they are, that they'd knowingly risk the site of a terrorist bombing the day before. An attack that happened before Biden's self-imposed deadline.

Biden created the bad situation. And all of the military advisors told him that this would happen. The Afghan military was still dependent on the US for air support. They weren't prepared to fight guerilla tactics without air superiority.

You can put your head back up your ass now, as I seriously doubt you're capable of learning anything. Especially the gut-wrenching human cost to Biden's whim.

Lots of Monday morning quarterbacking but still no reason to think Biden has blood on his hands from the suicide bombing. Why is he responsible for that? More specifically, what could he have done differently that would have prevented it?

[Syne]

Biden already had blood on his hands, before the bombing. People getting trampled and falling from planes in the mad rush to flee the Taliban, the Taliban killing "traitors" who aided the US, etc.. And he'd have all the Afghan blood and terror resulting from the US withdrawal, even if a bombing never occurred. Biden didn't have to pull the bulk of the 2,500 troops weeks before his own, arbitrary Aug 31st deadline. That alone meant there were fewer extraction points and that evacuations would be slow, as they bottle-necked at a single airfield. Biden didn't have to announce his deadline to the Taliban or give them a list of US citizens, green card holders, and allies, which they could use as a kill list. He could have left the minimal contingent of 2,500 to keep the country stable and ISIS free, which is a much smaller force than we have in Japan, South Korea, Guam, Germany, Italy, the UK, etc., none of which any moron Democrats are demanding we pull out of. And even if he was set on withdrawal, he could have made sure all civilians were evacuated first and try to keep US military equipment and weapons out of Taliban hands.