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Liberal Cynic's avatar

About that Peter Baker tweet: he "creatively" edited Stephanoplous's question. The actual question was:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/28/3-big-takeaways-mark-milley-hearing/

"So your military advisers did not tell you, “No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that?""

That's what Biden answered no to. No general told him they could keep a stable situation in Afghanistan with only 2,500 troops staying there especially given the Doha agreement between TFG and the Taliban.

From the same link above, Austin said, “the intelligence was clear that if we did not leave in accordance with that agreement, the Taliban would recommence attacks on our forces.”

So keeping 2,500 US forces there would not nearly have been enough to keep any kind of stability.

But I'm looking forward to Shay Khatiri's next hyperventilating article about how we should have stayed in Afghanistan forever because reasons.

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Les Brown's avatar

Just a note of appreciation for The Bulwark… you and The Economist are currently my two most helpful, informative reads… thanks….

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