Joe Biden administration blames chaotic Afghan pull-out on Trump

[Bkk Brian]

12 minutes ago, sqwakvfr said:

No I did not miss that.  I had a TS SCI for years.  

Then you of course know that a TS SCI doesn’t mean you hold SCI access for all information and is permitted on a need-to-know basis 

Edited April 8, 2023 by Bkk Brian

[Scott]

One of the big problems was the lack of information on who was actually eligible to be evacuated.   It doesn't work well to evacuate whoever shows up at the airport first. 

 

There were 20 years of time and that includes a lot of people who worked for or were associated with fighting the Taliban.  In general the people who get evacuated are the employees of the US Military and those who have worked with/for NGOs that received money from the US. 

 

Evacuation involves bringing the immediate family members of the primary person.  That has to be defined.  In general it means those who can show they lived in the family household --so it may mean grandparents.  Generally, adult sibling of a primary would not be evacuated unless they were a part of the household. 

 

Single women are sometimes allowed to be accompanied by a male relative for religious reasons even though he would not be eligible to leave. 

 

It was pretty obvious there was little attention paid over a long period of time as to who was at the greatest danger and in need of being evacuated. 

 

It should be noted that most of these people have not qualified as refugees and have been resettled under humanitarian visas.  Those visas are due to expire soon and many could face deportation back to Afghanistan. 

 

[Scott Tracy]

On 4/7/2023 at 2:36 AM, JonnyF said:

Biden mis-managed the withdrawal. He was in charge at the time it was undertaken. Huge mistakes were made in the way it was handled. It was a complete shambles. He should own it. 

He, he...? What about all these highly paid military men...sorry, people...experts in what they do, so I'm told. 

[ozimoron]

Just now, Scott Tracy said:

He, he...? What about all these highly paid military men...sorry, people...experts in what they do, so I'm told. 

The Biden haters single argument is that Biden was CIC at the time and therefore should carry the can absolutely. No attempt at any kind of considered argument about how this debacle actually came about.

[heybruce]

9 hours ago, sqwakvfr said:

The Marshall Plan was executed by the military.  I did not see C-47's with DOS flying over Berlin?  Have you ever worked for the State Department?  Have you been inside the Kabul embassy?  I can say yes to both and what I saw from inside was disappointing and at times shocking.  

Just imagine being in a room full of Ivy League school graduates who are tasked to rebuild Afghanistan. The theoretical discussions went on and on but when it came time to go out into the field to engage the locals getting the State Department personnel to accompany military members was like pulling teeth.  Most did not want to leave the comforts of working and living in the secure Embassy compound that had great food, great gym and a store where you can buy all the adult beverages you could desire.  You can't rebuild a nation sitting in a cubicle while typing away on a laptop.  

 

Many of the civil and diplomatic missions were carried out by soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors who knew nothing about these two functions.  

 

Today's State Department. 

"The Marshall Plan was executed by the military."

 

The military provided aid equivalent to 5% of US GDP and determined how it was to be used in Europe post-WW II?  I don't think so.  Got any sources to back that up?

 

I don't know what you expected the State Department to do after the Afghan government was toppled with no plan for the aftermath.  A problem compounded by all emphasis shifting to Iraq while Afghanistan was still in disarray and insecure. 

 

The State Department's job (one of them) is to prevent fires, not put them out.  Once a county is secure it can get involved in reconstruction, but it doesn't secure the country.  That's why Mattiss commented on the need for more ammunition if State Department funding was cut.

[thaibeachlovers]

13 hours ago, Purdey said:

No one is pointing out that when Trump signed his deal with Afghanistan the military knew the date and were still unprepared as it drew near.

I don't believe any politician is capable of organizing a military withdrawal. Military generals do. And they failed to be prepared. 

The POTUS is also Commander in Chief, which in the US actually means something. If the military were unprepared, Biden should have been made aware of it by his advisers and done something about it. It's convenient to blame it on someone else, whether Trump or the military high command, but as a former president pointed out, the buck stops at the sitting president's desk.

[thaibeachlovers]

13 hours ago, Walker88 said:

AFter the trump commitment to withdraw, trump ordered no removal of any equipment and did not even order that anything be pre-positioned for removal, a process that would have taken the better part of a year (a country that spent 17 years building up cannot remove everything in an afternoon). Biden inherited the commitment and time table, so the fact hundreds of billions worth of gear was left abandoned falls largely on trump, too.

Regardless on who was to blame, if the equipment was left, it should have been destroyed, which is quite simple to do with enough C4. If it wasn't, that's on the generals in charge, as it's quite normal to do so.

Had Trump been personally involved in the withdrawal I'm sure that the usual anti Trump critics would have accused him of interfering in military matters.

Presidents make policy, but they have officials that deal with the situations, as they have a bit more to worry about than a purely military project.

[thaibeachlovers]

4 hours ago, Scott Tracy said:

He, he...? What about all these highly paid military men...sorry, people...experts in what they do, so I'm told. 

experts in what they do, so I'm told. 

 

To most that served in the military that's a somewhat comical statement.

I have personal knowledge of how incompetent military leaders can be.

[thaibeachlovers]

12 hours ago, nauseus said:

And I said "the topic problem still concerns the actual withdrawal and how badly it was managed", which amounts to the same thing. 

 

Unfortunately, Biden was the C-in-C and the responsibility is all his.

I'm sure that Biden would like to take credit for anything good that happens, and make the bad stuff someone else's problem, but it doesn't work like that in reality. Biden is indeed "responsible" even if the blame lies elsewhere.

[sqwakvfr]

1 hour ago, heybruce said:

"The Marshall Plan was executed by the military."

 

The military provided aid equivalent to 5% of US GDP and determined how it was to be used in Europe post-WW II?  I don't think so.  Got any sources to back that up?

 

I don't know what you expected the State Department to do after the Afghan government was toppled with no plan for the aftermath.  A problem compounded by all emphasis shifting to Iraq while Afghanistan was still in disarray and insecure. 

 

The State Department's job (one of them) is to prevent fires, not put them out.  Once a county is secure it can get involved in reconstruction, but it doesn't secure the country.  That's why Mattiss commented on the need for more ammunition if State Department funding was cut.

After the government collapsed there is nothing that can be done.  I meant what they did or they failed to do during the 20 years of rebuilding that was not done.  State was tasked withe rebuilding the Afghan Police?  How did that go?  Tasked with setting local governmental institutions?  How did that go?  Rebuilding the Afghan Ministry of Interior?  How did that go?  State Department personnel rarely left the embassy compound.  

[heybruce]

1 hour ago, sqwakvfr said:

After the government collapsed there is nothing that can be done.  I meant what they did or they failed to do during the 20 years of rebuilding that was not done.  State was tasked withe rebuilding the Afghan Police?  How did that go?  Tasked with setting local governmental institutions?  How did that go?  Rebuilding the Afghan Ministry of Interior?  How did that go?  State Department personnel rarely left the embassy compound.  

The State Department works with functioning governments.  That was not considered before the war.  After the government was toppled with no popular replacement, the options were to abandon the country to chaos, impose an open-ended military occupation for as long as it took (probably decades), or flail. 

 

The Bush administration chose to flail, though none of the geniuses who actually made decisions realized they made that choice.  Once the flailing option was chosen the other two options remained open, but the US public had not desire to pay for indefinite military occupation.  So we abandoned the country to chaos.

 

In short, don't blame the State Department for the failure in Afghanistan, blame the Bush administration.

[stevenl]

3 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

<snip>It's convenient to blame it on someone else, whether Trump or the military high command, but as a former president pointed out, the buck stops at the sitting president's desk.

 

3 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

<snip>

Presidents make policy, but they have officials that deal with the situations, as they have a bit more to worry about than a purely military project.

Please make up your mind.

[sqwakvfr]

3 hours ago, heybruce said:

The State Department works with functioning governments.  That was not considered before the war.  After the government was toppled with no popular replacement, the options were to abandon the country to chaos, impose an open-ended military occupation for as long as it took (probably decades), or flail. 

 

The Bush administration chose to flail, though none of the geniuses who actually made decisions realized they made that choice.  Once the flailing option was chosen the other two options remained open, but the US public had not desire to pay for indefinite military occupation.  So we abandoned the country to chaos.

 

In short, don't blame the State Department for the failure in Afghanistan, blame the Bush administration.

Bush left office in 2009.  The actual government of Afghanistan was toppled in August 2021.  For Bush and Rusmfeld (the real power in that White House) it was about 3 things in terms of foreign policy: Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq).  

 

So what was accomplished from 2009 to 2021 in Afghanistan?  

Edited April 9, 2023 by sqwakvfr

[ozimoron]

5 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

The POTUS is also Commander in Chief, which in the US actually means something. If the military were unprepared, Biden should have been made aware of it by his advisers and done something about it. It's convenient to blame it on someone else, whether Trump or the military high command, but as a former president pointed out, the buck stops at the sitting president's desk.

The military weren't unprepared,they simply got their assessment wrong. Again, this is the facile argument that if anything goes wrong it's the CIC's fault no matter what happened. All very nice and dandy in the echo chamber. Some people might want to look at what actually DID happen. Oh, wait, that's what they did. That's why we got this report.

[heybruce]

1 hour ago, sqwakvfr said:

Bush left office in 2009.  The actual government of Afghanistan was toppled in August 2021.  For Bush and Rusmfeld (the real power in that White House) it was about 3 things in terms of foreign policy: Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq).  

 

So what was accomplished from 2009 to 2021 in Afghanistan?  

As I posted, a lot of flailing.  No President knew what to do with Afghanistan but no President wanted to be the one to pull the plug and deal with the aftermath.  Even here it took a split effort between Republican and Democratic Presidents.

 

BTW:  I agree with your assessment of Bush and Rumsfeld.  I don't know if there ever was hope for "fixing" Afghanistan, but if there was it was lost when the focus shifted almost exclusively to Iraq.

Edited April 9, 2023 by heybruce