“Why did it have to be this way when the US knew it was leaving?”
Because the US wanted the Afghan government to have a fighting chance to take over and not undercut them.
Is that really so difficult to understand?
Of course it is a nightmare. That’s not the question. The question is what plan would have been smooth? The answer: none would have been smooth and not been tragic.
I actually disagree with the decision; I’m in the minority in this country because I think we should have stayed. But the sanctimonious Monday-morning quarterbacking on this is really something to behold.
And some of the same people engaging in sanctimony are the very policy people in Washington who refused to listen to voices like Sarah Chayce who were yelling from the rooftops that it was urgent that we make anti-corruption a centerpiece of our policy there and not a supposedly naive pie-in-the-sky sideshow.
We now see just how right she was.
Six-sixes and an “Amen”
I guess the would-have and should-have commentary is unavoidable. I’m disappointed to see fellow Democrats trashing the president and the party at this time. I think we are walking into a trap created by the prior administration.
I am absolutely convinced that this was the planned and expected outcome of the betrayal of America that Donald Trump executed on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2020.
I think Mr. Trump intentionally betrayed American interests in order to embarrass America. He “negotiated” an abrupt pullout that would have exactly these consequences. I think the evidence will eventually show that this betrayal is more evidence that he was and is a knowing, seditious, and criminal agent of Vladimir Putin.
The outcome would have been the same if Mr. Trump had won or even overturned the results of the 2020 election. His clear and often-repeated intent was to do as much harm as possible to American interests at every opportunity.
He should be imprisoned in GITMO for the rest of his life, and he should be thanking his lucky stars that he is not executed for sedition.
Ironically, the preferred outcome from the US point of view was that the army we paid for would fight a protracted bloody civil war.
As for engaging in sanctimony, I’ve already addressed that on another thread.
As seems to be the case in all our failed wars, the “preferred outcome from the US point of view” was a constantly moving target.
Other than punishing the “evil villains” who attacked us on 9/11 (which honest people will admit was our real purpose for initiating the debacle in Afghanistan), I’m not sure that we ever had an actual “preferred outcome”. Especially when “terrorist” almost immediately become a synonym for “Muslim” or even anybody with name somebody thought was Muslim. It took the better part of a decade for rabid right-wing American “patriots” to figure out that Sikhs (with turbans) were not Muslims.
I think I remember sanctimonious proclamations that we sought to bring freedom, liberty, and human rights to the people of Afghanistan when the proponents were first advocating this war. That didn’t last very long and was never more than posturing to shield the real motives.
Afghanistan was never a legitimate threat to American national security. Your summary of the most recent preferred outcome from the US point of view strikes me as pretty much on-target.
I don’t know — or care very much — about sanctimony. I think we are witnessing the inevitable and unavoidable result of twenty years of failed American policy.
I think that at least some of the players in this actively sought to maximize the chaos, shame, suffering, and pure human tragedy that we are seeing — just as those same players have done the same about the pandemic since it began and just as those same players have done the same about climate change for as long as it has been on the table. The purpose of the January 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol was to drive the message that the US government is illegitimate. Each of the relentlessly-repeated bodycam videos of the attack reinforce that message.
We are dealing with a seditionist movement that seeks to destroy representative democracy in the US. This movement is actively pursuing anything and everything that threatens the foundations of America.