Robert Ariail for August 16, 2021

I would laugh if I wasn’t crying.

Thanks Bush.

Thanks Cheney.

(And Cheney’s daughter has the unmitigated GALL to criticize President Biden….)

Everyone approved of the withdrawal, Republicans included……until they could wrangle political advantage – by having the Democrats do what their Dear Leader was praised and deified for when he promised to do it.

I suppose the Republicans will twist this by portraying Afghanistan’s spectacular collapse as all the Biden administration’s fault.

We should only help them with medicines and food, not soldiers and weaponry. But then again, we’d probably need the soldiers to protect the distribution.

Remember when tRump made his ‘Patton’ speech about not telling the enemy when you were going to do something? Then the ‘Art of the Deal’ maker made the worst deal in the history of the U.S. by agreeing to leave Afghanistan by a named date as long as they don’t shoot at us.

If the Afghanis won’t fight for their own country, why should anyone else?

I was thinking this was a perfect analogy of the Trumplicans—remove their training wheels (Trump) and they will collapse until the moderate Republicans can retake from the radical right.

From the very first, this was a doomed venture for the United States. The only simile that fits is that Afghanistan is exactly like Joel Chandler Harris’s “tar Baby” of Uncle Remus fame.

America was doomed from the very first swipe at the tar baby’s jaw.

We tried to establish a government in Kabul within a country that is “ungovernable” in any accepted sense of the word.

Tribal chieftains with their militias STILL remain the source of governance and that never changed.

From the very first instance of a western power trying to establish a central government (Britain) through the Soviets and on to the Americans – no one has successfully established a central government in Afghanistan.

It really is like trying to build a foundation out of “river rock” without the use of cement.

The Taliban was, is, and will be “successful” because they have no intention of ‘governing’ – they only plan to rule.

The disaster of the end of American involvement would have played out the same, no matter who sat in the Oval Office.

The slaughter of the Afghans who aided the American troops can be laid at the feet of the Pentagon who had more than enough time to plan the evacuation and did nothing.

Biden was forced to follow the timetable established by the Trump administration for withdrawal.

Technically, blame may be placed at the feet of whatever idiot decided to establish a semi-permanent presence in a “non-country” country, A cursory study of history would have shown that.

U.S, involvement was never going to create a stable Afghanistan, for reasons spelled out in “The WEIRDest People in the World” by Henrich.

Attempts at “education” fail when the student fails to cooperate…

I supported Biden’s run for the presidency, but I also said I fully expected there would be times when I would criticize him. Is this one of those times? The war was lost long ago. It was lost at the very moment it began. I was in the streets protesting Bush’s intervention. I have consistently opposed US imperialism since 1967, for moral and practical reasons. No one who supported this war is in a position to criticize Biden. Perhaps, probably, there could have been a less dramatic way to pull out, but the end was in sight one way or another. Please, could we learn something from this? It happens over and over and over, because there are powerful interests that profit, but it doesn’t help anyone.

What, exactly, was the objective of the ‘training’?

And when, exactly, do the training wheels come off?

.

You’ll notice that no one, especially Trump Disciples, have even attempted to answer either question.

MB must have worked in a movie theater as the Head Projectionist.

I said in these comments that I supported President Biden on his decision to pull out of Afghanistan and would never criticize him for doing so. That said I do condemn him for his nonexistent strategy for withdrawal. Again, because it had President Trump’s name on it, Biden tossed away the strategic and tactical planes to get our allies, contractors, diplomatic personnel and troops out. Gen. Milley, who I have no great liking for, urged Biden to follow those plans or at least some of the contingency plans, but Biden ignored him and all of his military advisors. For gosh sakes, he ordered Baghram AFB closed when it should have been the last military station to be abandoned at the very end of the evacuation, I said so at the time. All of our allies and other friendlies should have quietly and with no fanfare or announcements, begun to have been evacuated months ago. Yes, we should leave Afghanistan, but not like this with all the chaos and madness that is taking place. There is nothing that Biden has touched or made a decision on since he’s been in office that hasn’t turned to crap in an absolute sh!tshow and a great part of the reason for that is he trashes anything that President Trump had a hand on no matter how well it worked or was planned out.

THE ORANGE BLOB was negotiating a surrender to the Taliban to cement his coronation into the office of Fuhrer in the Fourth Reich. When Biden dethroned the wannabe despot, the republican crime syndicate conveniently forgot about their attempts at a negotiated settlement with a terrorist group.

We will leave behind thousands of fine American rifles, enough ammunition to fight WW11 again, and millions of dollars in other equipment.

M B is into summer reruns today.

Efforts to drag Afghanistan kicking and screaming into the 19th century have failed.

I can’t even imagine what the response would be from the left and the corporate media had this debacle happened while the orange man bad was in office. Yikes!

1975, all over again.

Sorry for shouting but TRUMP MET WITH THE TALIBAN AND WITHOUT THE AFGHANISTAN GOVERNMENT TO ARRANGE THE WITHDRAWAL.

https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-defense-minister-blames-trump-afghanistan-taliban-crisis-2021-8

Sounds like they’re really.slow.learners.

He never had any intention of riding that bike.

That’s the whole point. What was Biden supposed to do, keep running alongside and holding the bike up? Their government collapsed in a day. That really means that it didn’t actually exist at all, and we were holding things together entirely. Enough.

basically