Disgraceful

[Ivytalk]

New Reuters poll just out shows 7-point drop in Biden approval rating in less than a week, from 53% to 46%.

[GannonFan]

That's the colossal screwup here - there are thousands of American citizens still in Afghanistan, most of whom don't want to be there, and there are tens of thousands of Afghans who helped us who want to get out and they aren't out yet either. And there's no seemingly clear plan on how to get them out or even when. I read somewhere that just getting the visas processed for the latter group will take another 2-3 years. I guess on the bright side some of them may not be alive then so that should cut down on the backlog a little bit.

Again, no one is arguing that we should be in Afghanistan, either fighting or trying to prop up a government that the Afghans won't fight for themselves. The argument is over why we fumbled the transition as badly as we did.

Maybe Afghanistan should be broken up. Isn't it an artificial construct created by the British? What about a Pashtun majority country and non-Pashtun majority country?

It's amazing how much can be traced back to the British. For all of their cool accents, they sure did make a mess out of parts of the world.

[GannonFan]

New Reuters poll just out shows 7-point drop in Biden approval rating in less than a week, from 53% to 46%.

He was already dropping precipitously in the all important independent responding group. Maybe he's just playing a long game - uninspire people and muck it up in the first year, and then turn things around in the second year and head into the midterms with things moving in a positive way. Pretty much enter the midterm year with nowhere to go but up. Or, on the other hand, maybe he's just not really mentally equipped for the job. Eh, could be the first one.

[SDHornet]

No questions taken, and unsurprisingly blames Orange Man...and the Afghan Army for not fighting. Glorious.

Twitter thread of his speech:

...both true, but that doesn't absolve him. I talked to a troop years ago, like 8-9 years ago who said back then that the Afghan Army was mostly guys who would take their weapon and defect at the first opportunity. These people acting surprised that they collapsed so fast....

It was a surprise to the CIC and anyone else that willingly ignored/denied the intel briefings.

Like I said, 100% on Biden*.

[Bobcat]

Every single person that voted for Biden has Afgan blood on their hands.

This includes me, I am embarrassed that I voted for this clown. I am now an accomplice to killing women , gays and fellow Americans. The extremely embarrassing part is I am in the same boat as John St Onge. That is unforgivable

[SDHornet]

Every single person that voted for Biden has Afgan blood on their hands.

This includes me, I am embarrassed that I voted for this clown. I am now an accomplice to killing women , gays and fellow Americans. The extremely embarrassing part is I am in the same boat as John St Onge. That is unforgivable

Props for acknowledging this. Lots of Biden* voters I know in person (and some on here) just stick to the "but Trump" spin as a weak as way to deflect their responsibility from the bloodshed that is sure to happen over there.

[SDHornet]

Looks like the band...the Taliband...is getting back together.

[SDHornet]

[93henfan]

I'm not Carnac, but this looks to go one of two ways:

1. Biden negotiates with Taliban to give our folks safe passage or we unleash utter hell by air, and Taliban allows our folks to get out.

or

2. Hostage/execution scenarios that make Carter's issues in Iran look like tiddlywinks.

[SDHornet]

Welp, we all know what will happen next.

[SDHornet]

I'm not Carnac, but this looks to go one of two ways:

1. Biden negotiates with Taliban to give our folks safe passage or we unleash utter hell by air, and Taliban allows our folks to get out.

or

2. Hostage/execution scenarios that make Carter's issues in Iran look like tiddlywinks.

Yep. How long will it take to evac 15k folks? At this point I think we can write off any Afghani's that aren't already at the airport.

[SDHornet]

This is on Biden* and his voters hands.

[93henfan]

Every single person that voted for Biden has Afgan blood on their hands.

This includes me, I am embarrassed that I voted for this clown. I am now an accomplice to killing women , gays and fellow Americans. The extremely embarrassing part is I am in the same boat as John St Onge. That is unforgivable

Don't feel too bad. I voted for Bush/Cheney (only once), who started the war in Iraq based on manufactured information. And got my OCS platoon commander killed.

[SDHornet]

While the rest of the US Government squanders trillions, the United States Marine Corps keeps the CH-46 going for a seventh decade.

Whenever I hopped a flight on one, you always wanted to feel the hydraulic fluid drip on you, so you at least knew that there was some left in the aircraft.

Also, BDK is slipping. I need a clip of Blinken saying that Afghanistan won't fall from a Friday to a Monday. You just can't make up the soundbites that Biden and Blinken dropped in the weeks leading up to this unmitigated Biden disaster.

Any crew chief worth his salt had an extra 55 gallon drum inside. My unit pulled several mountain climbers off of Denali with shithooks back in the day- a Huey tops out about 10,000 ft, about halfway up. Once they took a researcher from Stanford who lost both arms in a bear attack - the guy with her beat the bear with his backpack until it eventually left the scene

Wow.

[CID1990]

Any crew chief worth his salt had an extra 55 gallon drum inside. My unit pulled several mountain climbers off of Denali with shithooks back in the day- a Huey tops out about 10,000 ft, about halfway up. Once they took a researcher from Stanford who lost both arms in a bear attack - the guy with her beat the bear with his backpack until it eventually left the scene

Wow.

Damn. I knew it had to be so


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[SDHornet]

[UNI88]

If you're an American citizen, why would you wait until the last minute to try and leave Kabul? The signs that this was coming were there as provinces and cities started falling in May. Did they believe that the US government would get them out?

[CID1990]

If you're an American citizen, why would you wait until the last minute to try and leave Kabul? The signs that this was coming were there as provinces and cities started falling in May. Did they believe that the US government would get them out?

Yes

Because like a lot of people on this board, they had a puzzling, non-fact based faith in the USG.

An hubris, of course. There’s a certain amount of hubris in any overseas American


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[AZGrizFan]

If you're an American citizen, why would you wait until the last minute to try and leave Kabul? The signs that this was coming were there as provinces and cities started falling in May. Did they believe that the US government would get them out?

Yes

Because like a lot of people on this board, they had a puzzling, non-fact based faith in the USG.

An hubris, of course. There’s a certain amount of hubris in any overseas American


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And they were TOLD they’d be gotten out, too. Then told to “shelter in place and don’t come to the airport”. Then abandoned.

[UNI88]

If you're an American citizen, why would you wait until the last minute to try and leave Kabul? The signs that this was coming were there as provinces and cities started falling in May. Did they believe that the US government would get them out?

Yes

Because like a lot of people on this board, they had a puzzling, non-fact based faith in the USG.

An hubris, of course. There’s a certain amount of hubris in any overseas American

I must be wired differently.

I'm curious, how many Americans were in Kabul/Afghanistan in April compared to how many were there the day Kabul fell. Unscientific example of the percentage of Americans with hubris and/or a "puzzling, non-fact based faith in the USG."

[Skjellyfetti]

She was the only member of Congress to vote against war in Afghanistan. Some called her a traitor.

Rep. Barbara Lee faced death threats, insults and hate mail after she voted against a broad authorization used to carry out the war in Afghanistan

Rep. Barbara Lee agonized over her vote, she said later, until that morning, when the California Democrat listened to the prayer of one of the country’s most prominent clergymen.

It was three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and like nearly every other member of Congress, she was attending a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral. In his opening invocation, the dean of the cathedral, the Rev. Nathan Baxter, said, “Let us also pray for divine wisdom as our leaders consider the necessary actions for national security, wisdom of the grace of God, that as we act we not become the evil we deplore.”

When she quoted him on the House floor later that day to explain her vote against giving the president a broad, open-ended authorization for military force, she was called a terrorist, a traitor and close to treasonous. The House vote was 420 to 1. The Senate vote was 98 to 0.

Twenty years, countless lives and more than a trillion dollars later, as the Biden administration ends the longest conflict in U.S. history, many are looking anew at Lee’s lone vote against the measure that gave the president nearly unlimited power to wage war in Afghanistan or against anyone else involved with or harboring terrorists.

Then-Sen. Joe Biden voted for it. So did then-Rep. Bernie Sanders, who later became one of the most vocal critics of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), long known as an activist who believed in nonviolence, voted for it, too — though he seemed to regret it almost immediately, telling The Washington Post he was “probably 99 percent of the way there in my heart and my soul,” but that he “wanted to send the strongest possible message that we can’t let terrorism stand.”

Lee said later she was surprised to realize she was the only member of Congress to vote against it, and that is evident in her speech on the House floor explaining her decision.

“However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, ‘Let’s step back for a moment, let’s just pause, just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control.’ ”

“Some of us” turned out to be just her.

The reaction to her vote was furious, reflecting the strong emotions of the day. The Wall Street Journal called her a “clueless liberal” and asked if she was anti-American. The Washington Times called her “a long-practicing supporter of America’s enemies.” The phones in her office were turned off after they were flooded with calls, The Post wrote, and she received so many death threats that for a time she had a police detail protecting her.

She also received thousands of letters, both in support and opposition, that are now housed at Mills College. In 2014, the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf went through two of the 12 boxes of letters and found comments like these:

“You should have been in the Trade Towers you anti-American [expletive]. Drop dead!!!”

“Did you hope to go down as the sole pacifist in a sea of war-mongers? If so, you missed the mark. You will go down in history as the sole coward in a sea of courageous legislators.”

“You are a dog. Not even an American dog, a black mutt.”

“Regarding your lone dissent, the terrorists used God as an excuse. Is it true ‘God’ helped you make your decision, too? Congratulations on using terrorist mentality!”

“You do not stand alone in evil — you stand with Bin Laden & Hitler & Judas.”

Lee spent weeks explaining her vote in op-eds and interviews. She wasn’t a pacifist, she said, and she wasn’t against President George W. Bush responding to the terrorist attacks with military force. But she thought it was an abdication of Congress’s power to declare war, and she didn’t want to give a president a “blank check” to start a war with no fixed goal or end date.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/ ... stan-vote/

[CID1990]

Yes

Because like a lot of people on this board, they had a puzzling, non-fact based faith in the USG.

An hubris, of course. There’s a certain amount of hubris in any overseas American

I must be wired differently.

I'm curious, how many Americans were in Kabul/Afghanistan in April compared to how many were there the day Kabul fell. Unscientific example of the percentage of Americans with hubris and/or a "puzzling, non-fact based faith in the USG."

People have been trickling out for the last few months but nothing like the exodus it should have been

I was watching this woman from CNN today... interviewing Taliban on the streets in Kabul

She actually started to argue with one of them about whether or not their vision was “actually Islam”

Aside from the stupidity of having her face on international TV so that the mujaheddin can ID her...

I hate to say this but I will have very little sympathy for her if she winds up in a burqua, stuck there... sort of the same sympathy I lack for the unvaccinated who die of COVID

BTW - she won’t be a hero. She just stupid. There’s a difference


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[BDKJMU]

If you're an American citizen, why would you wait until the last minute to try and leave Kabul? The signs that this was coming were there as provinces and cities started falling in May. Did they believe that the US government would get them out?

Well, comments like the below from these dumbasses certainly played a part.

[SDHornet]

Because of course they did.

We haven't even touched on how the Afghani's that are getting out are getting (or not getting) vetted before being resettled here. But at least we have the FBI to stop another Pulse Night Club type of shooting.

[BDKJMU]

Now Harris is taking a trip to Vietman? You‘ve got to be kidding me..