Today In Biden Land

[Kirkland Laing]

Biggest stretch of reality we can attempt to make is that any of the last 5 U.S administrations have clean hands in this. It's a giant shat sammich everybody grab a napkin. This was going to be ugly and nasty with back to back pull out "plans" made into campaign slogans but given a literal end date. In a way it's the closest Trump and Biden have ever been on anything but we're trying to put lipstick on pigs and make them our favored security blankets. The execution and order of exit was shameful and needs to be investigated. Lost me at midnight abandonment of Afghan forces and Bagram airbase like we were fleeing a rent collecting landlord. And so was knee-capping the Afghan leadership and agreeing that the Taliban will 'fight the terrorist's and freeing thousands of them. I'm of the unpopular opinion that our small maintained quick reaction and air based presence kept the lid on the jar and was the burden we (they) excepted once we entered and cleared the hornets nest in the first place and agreed to provide the full rent. Politicians knew that and they just kicked the can down the road.

There are up to ten thousand Americans still in Afghanistan. The situation over there could easily go to shit at any time. I wonder what we'll discover in years to come about this, exactly what bribes or assurances we've given the Taliban to let us get our people out. The Taliban aren't going to let the west extract all their people and then turn on them full scale with sanctions, international isolation and so on. They have the west by the balls at the minute and will surely have extracted cast iron guarantees over various issues.

Even if they have and you would have to think they have thinks can still go wrong at any minute. But if we were going to leave this kind of situation was inevitable. I wonder if any agreements were worked up in advance.

When you look at this:

https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1426938737523630090

it makes you wonder. But then you have Biden making all those claims on camera just a few weeks ago that the whole thing wouldn't end up like the fall of Saigon and so on. So maybe the whole thing is just an epic clusterfuck with huge amounts of blame for everybody involved.

These posts all make excellent points/are very informative:



https://twitter.com/JustinTLogan/sta...90580679745537
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https://twitter.com/Ibishblog/status...87884238843905



https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/sta...79074092183553



https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/sta...26213325377540

keep scrolling



https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/stat...86393291481088



https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1427660668937900040



https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/sta...84020430729222



https://www.slowboring.com/p/afghan-war