[Newfie]

While surely not for everyone our personal power down has been a refreshing disconnect from a false reality. We enjoy the simpler life. It was a big step up in our personal life.

I think that is the trick. People think power down would be hell. But that ain’t necessarily so.

We are not living a bums life and enjoy many fine things. We are happy. Happier than before.

[Newfie]

Well CNN has turned in Biden pretty hard. Now replaying his past new conferences where he promised/assured an orderly drawdown.

NPR did a piece noting Trump kept the war hawk Republicans at bay and noting the mid-terms, not usually good for the majority party, are coming up.

[Plantagenet]

Well CNN has turned in Biden pretty hard. Now replaying his past new conferences where he promised/assured an orderly drawdown..

Biden obviously didn't have a clue about the reality on the ground.

And at his press conference a few minutes ago rather then admitting Afghanistan has become FUBAR, Biden instead said everything is going just as he planned it.

Apparently the deaths and hysteria and chaos at the airport is part of Joe Biden's plan. God knows why he wanted it this way, but Joe says this is what he planned in advance.

Cheers!

[Plantagenet]

The DOHA peace treaty was conditional.....the US agreed to withdraw as the Taliban met certain conditions.....like entering into negotiations towards a peace treaty with the government.

But Biden decided to ignore the peace treaty and pull all US troops out without the Taliban having to meet any of their obligations under the peace treat.

So this is all on Biden.

The mess is 100% Biden's fault, and Joe even admits it. Joe proudly just said everything in Afghanistan is happening just as he planned it.

SHEESH!

[dissident]

The facts on the ground speak to little value in the domestic US blame game. Some other president would not have produced a totally different outcome. Afghanistan folded in 9 days to the Taliban. That "300,000" (more like less than half this number) "trained" army was just giving over their US supplied equipment to the Taliban without a fight. So the regime in Kabul was pathetically lacking in local support. There is no way any US president through some more of the same policy convert this into any sort of win. Afghanistan was lost years ago and was just a rotten facade that dissolved into thin air.

[Newfie]

Dissident,

Probably correct.

And the outcome was likely inevitable.

And there should have been some acknowledgement of that preparing the American public for the eventuality.

And if that was not possible for strategic reasons, under mining the Afgan government then those reasons are now gone. And Biden should say, “Americans, we could not share the truth at the time, but we can now.”

But he did not.

We have left behind a far better foe, including an air force, that we met 20 years ago.

There are still thousands of potential refugees on the ground. That suould have been better handled no matter what.

We are not out of this bloody woods yet.

[dissident]

One take on this issue that seems credible to me is that the move to delay the withdrawal after the agreed to date by Biden was a stupid move. Apparently the Taliban had signed on to a transition process but when the US in a single sided fashion broke the terms of the agreement, they washed their hands of any commitments. So here Biden does deserve blame for screwing up the withdrawal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZto99zFIoc

[Plantagenet]

One take on this issue that seems credible to me is that the move to delay the withdrawal after the agreed to date by Biden was a stupid move. Apparently the Taliban had signed on to a transition process but when the US in a single sided fashion broke the terms of the agreement, they washed their hands of any commitments. So here Biden does deserve blame for screwing up the withdrawal.

Even worse, all the advisors were telling Joe not to do the pullout in the middle of the "Taliban Fighting Season" when all their fighters go into the field to fight.

But Joe ignored and overruled all his advisors and insisted he knew better then the generals and the CIA experts.

Joe demanded everyone do things his way.

Thats why senile Joe is back in hiding all alone at Camp David instead of being in the White House situation room helping to fix this mess.

Joe is in hiding.

Joe is ashamed.

Joe totally #$%$3ed things up.

SHEESH!

[vtsnowedin]

May I predict that this and the ongoing border debacle have now sealed the mid term elections solidly in the Republicans favor.
The Democrats can not point to a single thing they have tried to do that has come out as a success.

[Plantagenet]

Its fascinating watching Biden and the Ds all lying about the debacle in Afghanistan.

They all claim they couldn't have known the Afghanistan regime would collapse.

But they are lying.

They were warned by our own people in Afganistan.

And then Biden and the Ds tried to hide it. They tried to do a coverup.

But the memo WARNING in advance that Afghanistan would collapse has just been leaked to the press.

they-knew-leaked-state-department-memo-warned-afghanistan-collapse

SHEESH!!!!

[Newfie]

CNN Report on that same matter.

Washington (CNN)A group of US diplomats wrote a classified cable to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in mid-July warning that swift action needed to be taken because they believed the situation in Afghanistan could rapidly deteriorate and they feared a catastrophe.

They laid out how the department should act quickly to process and evacuate Afghans who had assisted the United States and get them out of the country quickly.
The diplomats decided to send the dissent memo because they felt previous warnings and recommendations they had made were being ignored and labeled alarmist, two State Department officials told CNN.
The classified cable, signed by more than a dozen US diplomats, urged specific steps to be taken, including starting a biometric enrollment program for the Afghans applying for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) or refugee status ahead of the evacuation, so they wouldn't waste time before what they believed would be the imminent collapse of the Afghan government as the US withdrew

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/19/politics ... index.html

Just because I distrust Zero Hedge, yet in this case they match CNN.

[Outcast_Searcher]

May I predict that this and the ongoing border debacle have now sealed the mid term elections solidly in the Republicans favor.
The Democrats can not point to a single thing they have tried to do that has come out as a success.

As if in the real world, despite how ridiculous the general right wing position is re Covid-19 denial and misinformation, Biden's work on trying to get people vaccinated against covid-19 isn't a good thing, vs. the Trump denialism.

But keep campagning. No doubt Trumpers and lots of science deniers will believe you.

... And I'm no fan of Biden generally, nor high taxes as the solution to all problems. But pretending what the GOP is doing is somehow a good thing is laughable, given the overall picture.

[Outcast_Searcher]

CNN Report on that same matter.

Washington (CNN)A group of US diplomats wrote a classified cable to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in mid-July warning that swift action needed to be taken because they believed the situation in Afghanistan could rapidly deteriorate and they feared a catastrophe.

They laid out how the department should act quickly to process and evacuate Afghans who had assisted the United States and get them out of the country quickly.
The diplomats decided to send the dissent memo because they felt previous warnings and recommendations they had made were being ignored and labeled alarmist, two State Department officials told CNN.
The classified cable, signed by more than a dozen US diplomats, urged specific steps to be taken, including starting a biometric enrollment program for the Afghans applying for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) or refugee status ahead of the evacuation, so they wouldn't waste time before what they believed would be the imminent collapse of the Afghan government as the US withdrew

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/19/politics ... index.html

Just because I distrust Zero Hedge, yet in this case they match CNN.

OTOH, given the disastrous policy of the GOP overall in the middle east since at least the first gulf war ended, pretending that the GOP has been anything re financials or "success" there overall, is simply ludicrous.

I thought the GOP didn't like spending or "death panels". And yet, given how much spending they're done re failed military policy in the middle east, and how many civilians such policy has caused to be killed, you'd think they were all for that.

Funny how that works.

[Plantagenet]

[

CNN Report on that same matter.

Washington (CNN)A group of US diplomats wrote a classified cable to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in mid-July warning that swift action needed to be taken because they believed the situation in Afghanistan could rapidly deteriorate and they feared a catastrophe.

They laid out how the department should act quickly to process and evacuate Afghans who had assisted the United States and get them out of the country quickly.
The diplomats decided to send the dissent memo because they felt previous warnings and recommendations they had made were being ignored and labeled alarmist, two State Department officials told CNN.
The classified cable, signed by more than a dozen US diplomats, urged specific steps to be taken, including starting a biometric enrollment program for the Afghans applying for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) or refugee status ahead of the evacuation, so they wouldn't waste time before what they believed would be the imminent collapse of the Afghan government as the US withdrew

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/19/politics ... index.html

Biden just had another press conference, and once again his is trying to make excuses for the disaster he has created in Afghanistan. The good news is that instead of lying about the warnings he received about the coming collapse in Afghanistan as detailed at Zero Hedge and CNN and many other news sources, Biden has begrudgingly finally stopped lying and admitted that he was clearly warned by the state department personal in Afghanistan and by others in the intelligence community and the military.

But, Biden continued, he had gone with the "consensus" opinion that the government in Kabul was stable and could survive after the precipitous US pullout.

What Biden doesn't seem to understand is that his job isn't to count the opinions and then go with the "consensus" opinion. His job as president is to sift through all the opinions and all the evidence and then make the RIGHT DECISION. It doesn't matter what the concensus is......what matters is what the facts are and what the RIGHT DECISION is.

And in this case Biden ignored the advice from the people who were actually in Afghanistan and knew best what the facts were on the ground. Biden instead went with his own stupid opinions and so made a series of disastrous decisions. Biden wrongly believed that there was no chance the Kabul government would rapidly collapse and no way this evacuation would be like Saigon. Biden even proclaimed his idiotic belief that Kabul would never collapse like Saigo. AND Now we know Biden was totally wrong.

Biden is a very stupid man and he's in cognitive decline to boot and his bad decisions have consequences for us all.

Giving up Bagram was stupid. Pulling out US troops and cutting off aid to the Afghans before all the US civilians were evacuated was stupid. Not having a good count of where US civilians were or even how many US civilians were in Afghanistan was stupid.

Biden is stupid stupid stupid and now he has revealed himself to be a senile old fool.

God help those soldiers Biden has sent back into Afghanistan, all packed into the Kabul city airport and surrounded by Taliban.

God help the US civilians scattered across Afghanistan that Biden just ignored while he planned his "cut and run" strategy.

And god help us all as long as Biden is still president.


Duh....pull all the troops out of Afghanistan now! Cut off all aid to the government!....Who cares what our people in Afghanistan say......what do they know?.....Kabul will never collapse like Saigon....AAAAAGHGGHHHHH!!!!....whats happening!.......my poll numbers are going down........what should I do........ I know I'll hide at Camp David......... No NO NO that didn't work ........ Quick......I'll send the troops back in now!..... I'll beg the Taliban to help.....US Civilians...ohmigosh....we had US civilians there.... I totally forgot about that!......AAAAAAAGHGGHGHGRHHHHH!!!

Cheers!

[Newfie]

Outcast,

Neither VT or I said anything about the Republicans doing anything right.

What we were noting is how BAD Biden looks. VT thinks that may hurt the D’s. Seems logical to me.

And I was posting links to news stories.

I believe you are miss-reading.

[Newfie]

Plant and VT,

I don’t know what the repercussions will be.

IF the story ends with the evacuation then things will likely die down and Biden will be OK.

IF the Taliban take American citizen hostages, as I believe likely, then this could hurt Biden and the Democrats very badly.

They do not need many hostages, a couple of hundred would be more than enough. My understanding is the Taliban is a loose group of tribes under war lords. So even if the central government keeps no hostages the various tribes may keep a few, to squeeze the central government. I am purely guessing there are 5 to 10 tribal entities with the ability to take and keep hostages so I think the possibility of hostages is high.

Hostages can keep this debacle on the news, in our face for long time and severely undermine the administration.

The other potentially negative is if there is some significant difficulty in Europe due evacuees. Say a large influx that destabilizes some governments. That could start a blame game against the USA, which would drag on and Biden would own.

[Plantagenet]

IF the story ends with the evacuation then things will likely die down and Biden will be OK.
IF the Taliban take American citizen hostages, as I believe likely, then this could hurt Biden and the Democrats very badly. They do not need many hostages, a couple of hundred would be more than enough.

It seems to me like the Taliban have ALREADY effectively taken thousands of American citizens as hostages.

A grand total of about 400 Americans have straggled into the compound since Biden sent the troops back into Afghanistan. Where are the other 14,600 Americans? They seem to be unable to get to the airport without help, and Biden is too much of a coward to send US troops to to help them.

BIden is obviously terrified of getting into a conflict with the Taliban, and he has ordered the US soldiers not to leave the airport......not even to go rescue US citizens in Kabul.

In contrast, the Brits are running daily patrols that go outside the airport and drive around Kabul and pick up their people and bring them back to the airport.

Hoo-RAY FOR THE BRITS. At least they are showing some courage in rescuing their people, even in the middle of this mess Biden has made.

....even if the central government keeps no hostages the various tribes may keep a few, to squeeze the central government. I am purely guessing there are 5 to 10 tribal entities with the ability to take and keep hostages so I think the possibility of hostages is high.

Thats 100% right. And its not just tribal entities we have to worry about. There are thousands of ISIS fighters in Afghanistan who hate the US, and no doubt there are still some Al Qaida people there. The Taliban just released thousands of the most violent jihadis from the prison at Bagram Air Force Base, after Biden-the-idiot ordered our forces to abandon it in the dead of night.

The other potentially negative is if there is some significant difficulty in Europe due evacuees. Say a large influx that destabilizes some governments. That could start a blame game against the USA, which would drag on and Biden would own.

Thats a distinct possibility, but thats down the road a bit.

The thing I'm worried about right now is Biden sent 6000 US fighters BACK INTO Afghanistan and they are penned up in the Kabul Airport and surrounded by Taliban fighters and their allies. It wouldn't take much---maybe just a small conflict at one of the gates---- to start a fire-fight between the Taliban surrounding the airport and the US soldiers crammed inside and that could rapidly turn into a huge bloodbath at the airport.


The Brits are sending daily armored vehicle patrols from the airport out into Kabul to pick up their citizens stranded in Kabul, while cowardly Biden has ordered US soldiers to not leave the Kabul airport to help US citizens stranded in Kabul.

Cheers!

[Newfie]

Plant,

Yup.

And yet you see very, very little of this kind of consideration in the press.

I am not surprised as humans are nearly 100% REACTIVE in orientation when under threat. The tiny PROACTIVE ability we have apparently requires a calm mind.

Just part of humans nature, we run from the lion, but must continue to live on the veldt, so the future danger is repressed.

Humans are the only animal that can out run a horse. But we can’t outrun time.

[Newfie]

Reading a LA Times story and came across this passage….

because of the closings, students were forced to cross gang boundaries, something Emanuel did not initially consider. His solution? Creating safe passage routes using police and school employees. Eventually, he had to bring in the city’s firefighters to double as security guards.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2 ... ador-japan

The story is slamming Biden for appointing Rham Emanuel as Ambassador to Japan. I don’t care about that.

What I do care about is a city where kids need escorts through safe passage sones to get to school.

Talk about failures in Afghanistan? We need to escort citizens to the airport.

Hell, we have that in Chicago!

Chicago had been under Democrat control since 1938.

One party rule sucks, which ever party.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Reading a LA Times story and came across this passage….

because of the closings, students were forced to cross gang boundaries, something Emanuel did not initially consider. His solution? Creating safe passage routes using police and school employees. Eventually, he had to bring in the city’s firefighters to double as security guards.

...

What I do care about is a city where kids need escorts through safe passage sones to get to school.

Talk about failures in Afghanistan? We need to escort citizens to the airport.

Hell, we have that in Chicago!

Chicago had been under Democrat control since 1938.

One party rule sucks, which ever party.

I know lots of people live in big cities to be close to jobs that require they show up daily (which hopefully will get better for many jobs as tech. continues to advance).

But unless I had one HELL of a high paying job that I just couldn't get anywhere else (like a much smaller, safer, lower cost of living city), I just don't see the trade-offs.

Like the folks providing software we used for mainframes, who had to live in LA. And they made like $100 grand when I only made $70 grand or so in the early 90's in my small, safe, relaxed city in central KY.

But they (per them) had 2 to 4 hours of daily commutes, to get into housing that only cost triple what our housing did. Far more crime. Far higher expenses generally, including taxes on the higher income. And just all that constant stress.

They'd have had to quadruple my salary to get me to do that, and I'd do it for as long as I needed to to get to financial independence, and get the hell back to a sane place to live. (Weather, cost, and sanity re belief systems (reflecting real world issues like getting vaccinated, etc) are clearly trade-offs, but there are LOTS of affordable cities of small-ish to moderate size to choose from in the US, even if you don't like rural living. Or just in my city, there's a ton of SUPER nice ordinary houses and yards in the exurbs, only 15 minutes or so from the city, for example.

I know some people crave "excitement" and "things to do", but man, the trade-offs. One can always go on "exciting" vacations and day trips, for example.