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here's what the image was...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/taliban-a ... us-support

The country’s mostly U.S.-provided air fleet was dependent on foreign contractors to assist with maintenance. As the U.S. withdrawal took hold, the Biden administration refused to allow contractors into the country to service the aircraft, effectively grounding some of the Afghan Air Force at the same time as the U.S. had withdrawn direct air support to Afghan forces.

The "twenty year" arbitrary timeframe quoted as a period of western interventionism is a hilarious farce. The British started mucking this place up as early as the the beginning of the 19th century with everybody joining in on the unilateral misery-making all the way through Rambo III, and I'm no historian. Thanks, Obama. A one term American president was an insignificant blip in this outcome.

If "because he knew 'I ENDED THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN!!!' would score points with his largely ignorant base, knowing full well that withdrawal would plunge the country into utter chaos and that would help GOP hawks rally around the Trump brand after contorting it into Biden's 'fault'" was an option, I'd choose that one. Otherwise, he didn't give two shits.

I've read a couple of things on this recently.

One was an interview with some military guy, who basically said the Afghan army only had enough people to cover maybe half of the country, so it was inevitable the taliban would take it.

Then there's the British Home Office deciding to throw our Afghani allies under the bus because they are "afraid of the message it would send to refugees":

one former interpreter who sold all his items having been told he was accepted into the UK’s 7000-place Afghan Relocation and Assistance Programme (Arap) for former support staff in May and was told to prepare to leave within four weeks.

Last week, the Home Office turned him away citing “security fears”, and he now fears the Taliban will behead him.

From here.

Some truly disturbing shit happening - plane taking off with people trying to cling on (and subsequently falling off), human remains found in the wheel well after an emergency landing....fucking horrible.

The answer is options 1 and 3. Trump only gives a fuck about things that directly affect him personally, i.e., Arby's drive thru closed for renovations.

Trump's admin doesn't appear to have had much more than retreat as a principle. Not clear that the inner circle cared about it at all or knew how it fit into more central considerations of their plans. The fact that he made some public statements about it means nothing.

Of interest, maybe, is the fact that the right still speaks through Trump immigration policy architect Stephen Miller - that's the big RCon takeaway, the opportunity to fan xenophobia and the idea that our nation should never think in terms of critiquing our international forays, as if morality and ethical behavior have no basis for existence in the wake of superior firepower and home-country, willy-nilly fancies of projected 'influence.' The RCons really are the worst kind of people.

We went into Afghanistan because, well, what else might we realistically have been expected to do? Half-in post-war global meddling was the only lens available, and nation-building, essentially rejected theoretically by W Bush during his campaign, could not be avoided since responding to 911 meant 'making a show of creating safety,' which meant changing the environment that hosted the offending parasite - not good enough to simply pull the tick's body off the embedded head, nor to gouge out the decapitated bulb - the wooded expanse needed mowing. There were whispers of minimal dissent, but there was literally no possibility that we were not going to step into the trap of a long-term, no-yield engagement.

Came as bullies, left as cowards. Nice one, Joe.

eddymerckx wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:53 am Came as bullies, left as cowards. Nice one, Joe.

Something I heard recently made me consider things in a different light. Biden’s been hearing these dopes in charge say “6 more months, sir. That’s all we need to really get things headed in the right direction.”

The choice was to realize there’s no good decision, and make the one that keeps American soldiers (more the contractors, really) out of the nation building game.

Waffles for the fact that he was senator/Vp for a lot of the leading up to this, but I also think that may have informed his decision.

I don’t like what’s happened, and I wish there were a better outcome than this, but man. Just seems like there was no good way to end something that needed ending.

eddymerckx wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:53 am Came as bullies, left as cowards. Nice one, Joe.

Bullshit. How about "Came as naive optimists, left as exhausted realists. Thank you, Joe, for being the one willing to finish off this half-eaten shit sandwich."

The US came into this country with the naive expectation that they were going to remake the place the same way they did Europe and east Asia after WWII. The naivete, of course, is that those places were nations, organized by secular rule-of-law and social contract. Easy peasy.

It was just plain stupid to think anyone can bring that to a nation of tribal warlords governed loosely by religious law and inter-tribal relationships. The literacy rate amongst adult men is only something like 5%. How can anyone expect to set up a secular government based upon rule-of-law when 90% of the adult population can't even fucking read? They would have been just as successful trying to train a standing national army of grey squirrels or macaques for fucksakes.

That foreign policy error that big-N 'Nations' need to stop making is to recognize that there are still places on earth that are not quite 'civilized' in the way that allows 'our' governmental systems to be exported with any sliver of success. And 'our' job is to stay the fuck out. Period.

If there is an absolute need to piss away taxpayer money on Sisyphean tasks, we might as well doing it trying to train squirrels and macaques to form secular republics and standing armies. At least it will prevent the tide of human misery that was unleashed over the previous 20 years.