That is absolutely true. Any idea that a western government was going to be propped up there was fantasy. The Taliban would take over the moment they could. Frankly the same is true in Iraq. The moment we are gone its going back to the militants.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger slammed the Trump administration's deal with the Taliban, saying on Sunday that it set the stage for the current failure in Afghanistan. The Illinois Republican said former President Donald Trump and his then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are at fault for America's "disastrous" withdrawal from the country. "Donald Trump was publicly saying, 'We have to get out of Afghanistan at all costs. It's not worth it.' Mike Pompeo meets with the Taliban and tries to 'negotiate' something," Kinzinger said during an appearance on CNN. "They ended up getting rolled almost as bad as Neville Chamberlain," he continued, referring to the British prime minister who negotiated the 1938 Munich Agreement, which was widely panned as enabling the Nazi invasion of Poland. "They set this up to fail," Kinzinger said. GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming on Sunday also blasted Trump's deal, calling it a "surrender" to the Taliban. "We sat down and negotiated with terrorists," Cheney told NBC News. "We gave credibility to the Taliban ... We completely undercut the Afghan national government. We absolutely emboldened the Taliban." While president, Trump was eager to remove American troops from Afghanistan and end the US' longest-running war. But he took an unprecedented step to try and fulfill that aim: negotiate directly with the Taliban. His administration engaged in a series of talks with the militant group in Qatar, and even invited them to a secret meeting at the presidential retreat Camp David for the 9/11 anniversary in 2019. Trump later reversed this decision after a Taliban attack killed a US service member in Afghanistan. Still, Trump reached a deal with the Taliban in February 2020, which stipulated that US troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan within 14 months on the condition that the Taliban not turn the country into a terrorist base. The agreement had been widely criticized at the time for acceding to the Taliban and excluding the Afghan government. Pompeo attended the signing ceremony and took photos alongside Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, who is anticipated to head the next Taliban government in Afghanistan. Trump has now attempted to absolve himself from the situation and pinned responsibility solely on President Joe Biden for the Taliban's takeover and the Afghan government's collapse. Though Kinzinger on Sunday attacked Trump, he also placed blame on Biden, who "could've easily turned this around" once he became president. "The Republicans are putting out talking points to make Biden look bad. The Democrats are putting out talking points to point out the past administration. In truth, they're both responsible," Kinzinger said. "Both parties have failed the American people," he added. Biden agreed to carry out Trump's deal and pull out of Afghanistan. This week he defended his withdrawal of US troops, despite receiving widespread criticism from both sides of the aisle amid disturbing scenes coming out of Kabul of people clamoring to leave the country and the resurgence of the Taliban.
Taliban dictating the terms. Get out by August 31 or else. Ya got one week Joe, one week before bad turns into REAL bad. After that the heads start rolling, literally.
Here is a press article about this... Taliban warn Biden and Johnson face serious 'consequences' if troop withdraw delayed TALIBAN leaders have threatened the US and UK with "consequences" if the withdrawal of western troops from Afghanistan is delayed. https://www.express.co.uk/news/worl...reat-US-troop-withdraw-kabul-airport-video-VN
Every plane arriving in Kabul for evacuations should be packed with Rangers and SpecOps people. Heavily armed angry men get off the plane and evacuees board the plane to leave. When this goes sideways we need to retake Bagram and work from there. A perimeter much larger than Bagram will need to be carved out. As it is now, the result of this is going to be that we don't leave Afghanistan. If it wasn't a perpetual war before it will be now.
Better yet, let’s let Mike Pompeo blame Joe Biden for the deal with the Taliban Mike Pompeo made. Or, let’s let Nikki Hailey criticize Joe Biden for negotiating with the Taliban after she negotiated with the Taliban.
That cable doesn’t even come close to predicting the cut and run scenario that actually unfolded. No one saw such a lay down happening. No one in government, no one on the ground and no one in the media , left or right. It really is time to stop acting like this 11 day collapse of an entire country was easily foreseeable or that anyone even posed it as a possibility.
And this is what it’s all about on right, any angle that would give them hope Trump could be elected again. They don’t care about US citizens, our military and certainly not Afghans that worked with us.
For once, you may be right. A new war may be unavoidable if we cannot get out all Americans. The stakes are very high right now.
I hear that. But as I said a couple days ago the reporting and focus is very "Kabul-centric" for a number of understandable reasons. I have, along with most others, an appetite for seeing some more aggressive and ballsy action in Kabul to retake it or portions of it and re-establish control at least for the purpose of evacuation. Unfortunately- the Kabul-centric- focus undercalculates the vast number of Americans and other allies still out in other parts of the country. So we can send in more military and take Kabul or enter into some kind of engagement but those in the outlying areas will disappear into hostage-land almost immediately and they can forget about any thought of making it to Kabul for exit. Just sayin, I am wide-eyed about what the cost of going into Kabul and/or restarting the war so to speak would be. What Biden is wide-eyed about I dont know, but I see the risk to the non-Kabul citizens as very high. That is not to say it should not be done, just that they absolutely need to exhaust negotiations but without it turning into dithering, and they need to be realistic about the fact that it is an operation to reduce net loss, because Americans are either going to be killed there and in the hinterlands or disappear into hostage scenarios. It would be equally dangerous to just dither because Joe says we are getting out without losing anyone except the peasants we have lost already and he does not care about. The 64,000 dollar question is "what will the Taliban do after the August 31 deadline if it is extended?" If they are just going to put the hammer down and close all lids in and out of the country and say that they abided by the deadline, then the Americans should have moved earlier even if it had high costs. We are largely dependent on the intel operations that fucked this up in the first place. What a mess.