Sorry but what do we "owe" the people we left behind. Perhaps a moral debt but there is no "we" just a series of folks who kicked the can down the road. By the time Biden took office we were more or less boxed in to leaving.
And re getting the folks out --- the visa effort should have started years before but it did not.
Sorry but what do we "owe" the people we left behind. Perhaps a moral debt but there is no "we" just a series of folks who kicked the can down the road. By the time Biden took office we were more or less boxed in to leaving.
And re getting the folks out --- the visa effort should have started years before but it did not.
Afghanistan is like an old building that would collapse if not completely renovated at a ridiculous cost. But no one wanted to pay that cost (so another 5-10 years, refighting the war, dealing with the terror across the nation.
And.. we are a nation bound to a constitution and laws. So sorry "I" am not agreeing to be part of the "we" who owe Afghans anything. I thought our going in to Afghanistan was ridiculous- as was our Iraq enterprise.
Biden was left holding the bag. He had the moral courage to put a halt to a mess.
Terrence, many Afghans put their lives on the line helping us, because they believed in what we were selling. They wanted to be free, and by granting them visas we made a promise to help them do just that. But in the end many were abandoned to be executed by the Taliban.
You may have thought going into Afghanistan was ridiculous, but most of America didn't, and that includes Joe Biden at the time. And even still, the actions of America on the world stage don't simply get wiped clean with every new Presidential administration. If that's the way we want to act, the rest of the world will hardly be willing to invest the trust in us needed to sustain our position in the global world order. Like it or not, we are one country in the eyes of everyone else.
Sorry don't convince me that the Afghans deserved better. But the question is who incurred the debt? We were told we were going in partly to capture Bin Laden and perhaps also to punish. And sorry, we dropped the ball. We gave up on the capture and the Bush administration lost interest in Afghanistan.
Why didn't we start the ball rolling to rescue folks years ago? But we did not.
Then Trump moved the ball along to the end - reducing soldiers. We were in the end-game.
So..... we were simply unable to carry out a task.
I didn't do that. You didn't. But Afghanistan was a lost cause as early as 2005 maybe even 2003.
Biden made a decision that closed the book on failure. The only alternative was to start the war back up. And for Afghans, that would not have been better.
The world is right to judge us. We handled Afghanistan poorly and did not do right by those who helped us.
But what can we do now?
Little to nothing.
There is lots of shit out there. Can't always fix it.
Sorry but what do we "owe" the people we left behind. Perhaps a moral debt but there is no "we" just a series of folks who kicked the can down the road. By the time Biden took office we were more or less boxed in to leaving.
And re getting the folks out --- the visa effort should have started years before but it did not.
Afghanistan is like an old building that would collapse if not completely renovated at a ridiculous cost. But no one wanted to pay that cost (so another 5-10 years, refighting the war, dealing with the terror across the nation.
And.. we are a nation bound to a constitution and laws. So sorry "I" am not agreeing to be part of the "we" who owe Afghans anything. I thought our going in to Afghanistan was ridiculous- as was our Iraq enterprise.
Biden was left holding the bag. He had the moral courage to put a halt to a mess.
Terrence, many Afghans put their lives on the line helping us, because they believed in what we were selling. They wanted to be free, and by granting them visas we made a promise to help them do just that. But in the end many were abandoned to be executed by the Taliban.
You may have thought going into Afghanistan was ridiculous, but most of America didn't, and that includes Joe Biden at the time. And even still, the actions of America on the world stage don't simply get wiped clean with every new Presidential administration. If that's the way we want to act, the rest of the world will hardly be willing to invest the trust in us needed to sustain our position in the global world order. Like it or not, we are one country in the eyes of everyone else.
Sorry don't convince me that the Afghans deserved better. But the question is who incurred the debt? We were told we were going in partly to capture Bin Laden and perhaps also to punish. And sorry, we dropped the ball. We gave up on the capture and the Bush administration lost interest in Afghanistan.
Why didn't we start the ball rolling to rescue folks years ago? But we did not.
Then Trump moved the ball along to the end - reducing soldiers. We were in the end-game.
So..... we were simply unable to carry out a task.
I didn't do that. You didn't. But Afghanistan was a lost cause as early as 2005 maybe even 2003.
Biden made a decision that closed the book on failure. The only alternative was to start the war back up. And for Afghans, that would not have been better.
The world is right to judge us. We handled Afghanistan poorly and did not do right by those who helped us.
But what can we do now?
Little to nothing.
There is lots of shit out there. Can't always fix it.