Edit— I meant to say that Trump Did Not do what he condemns, while Biden does do what he says he condemns. And that’s the defining distinction between their foreign policies. I butchered it by writing that Trump does do… which is saying that Biden and Trump are both contradicting themselves in the same way. That was not what I meant.
Trump surrendered to the Taliban in February 2020…and it was correct decision. We had no reason to be waging a war against the Taliban and we had no obligation to improve the lives of the people that harbored the 9/11 terrorists. And we had significantly fewer American combat deaths under Biden than under Trump…although since 2015 Obama had it way down from the 800 a year we had under Bush/Cheney. And the 7000 combat deaths we had in the GWOT didn’t make Americans any safer.
I don’t agree that we had no obligation to Afghans. But we had an interest in holding down Afghanistan so that Al Qaeda wouldn’t come back. Now Al Qaeda is flourishing under the Taliban since the withdrawal, proving my point.
So does Israel have an obligation to improve the lives of Palestinians in Gaza?? Of course not…but they share a border with them and so it could further their interests to improve their lives because it should lead to a safer Israel. But Israel can make that decision.
America had no obligation to people that harbored 9/11 terrorists. We had 3 objectives on 9/12/01–
1. degrade AQ so they can’t attack again. We achieved that objective fairly quickly.
2. Bring evildoers to justice. Bush failed that objective horribly and Biden was able to kill the 9/11 mastermind with no military presence in Afghanistan.
3. Prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven in which terrorists can plan attacks. Obviously waging war against the Taliban could be a way to further this objective…BUT working with the Taliban to help them kill terrorists could also further this objective. Terrorists are like roaches—you can’t eliminate them but you can keep them out of your house and so the fact terrorists exist doesn’t prove your point at all because we only care about preventing attacks on the American homeland and our allies. And Madrid and London were hit by major terrorist attacks after we degraded AQ and made Afghanistan inhospitable for terrorists. Trump got the Taliban to agree to kill terrorists in lands they control and if they don’t we can kill the terrorists with drone strikes like we did with al-Zawahiri. So I opposed waging war against the Taliban because it wasn’t the best way to achieve objectives 2 and 3.
I don’t know about 2 but I think waging war against the Taliban would accomplish 3. Afghanistan is now a haven for Al Qaeda and Islamic State Khorasan too. We’ll see how your pessimism on waging war on terror fares for the world.
Once again, our NATO partners had major terrorist attacks while NATO had Afghanistan under control. Our other close ally, Israel, had their 9/11 after we had waged a GWOT for 20 years killing tens of thousands of terrorists. Trump made the right call…and Biden had wanted to get out of Afghanistan since 2009 when Obama made the mistake of keeping Gates as SecDef.
Edit— I meant to say that Trump Did Not do what he condemns, while Biden does do what he says he condemns. And that’s the defining distinction between their foreign policies. I butchered it by writing that Trump does do… which is saying that Biden and Trump are both contradicting themselves in the same way. That was not what I meant.
Trump surrendered to the Taliban in February 2020…and it was correct decision. We had no reason to be waging a war against the Taliban and we had no obligation to improve the lives of the people that harbored the 9/11 terrorists. And we had significantly fewer American combat deaths under Biden than under Trump…although since 2015 Obama had it way down from the 800 a year we had under Bush/Cheney. And the 7000 combat deaths we had in the GWOT didn’t make Americans any safer.
I don’t agree that we had no obligation to Afghans. But we had an interest in holding down Afghanistan so that Al Qaeda wouldn’t come back. Now Al Qaeda is flourishing under the Taliban since the withdrawal, proving my point.
So does Israel have an obligation to improve the lives of Palestinians in Gaza?? Of course not…but they share a border with them and so it could further their interests to improve their lives because it should lead to a safer Israel. But Israel can make that decision.
America had no obligation to people that harbored 9/11 terrorists. We had 3 objectives on 9/12/01–
1. degrade AQ so they can’t attack again. We achieved that objective fairly quickly.
2. Bring evildoers to justice. Bush failed that objective horribly and Biden was able to kill the 9/11 mastermind with no military presence in Afghanistan.
3. Prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven in which terrorists can plan attacks. Obviously waging war against the Taliban could be a way to further this objective…BUT working with the Taliban to help them kill terrorists could also further this objective. Terrorists are like roaches—you can’t eliminate them but you can keep them out of your house and so the fact terrorists exist doesn’t prove your point at all because we only care about preventing attacks on the American homeland and our allies. And Madrid and London were hit by major terrorist attacks after we degraded AQ and made Afghanistan inhospitable for terrorists. Trump got the Taliban to agree to kill terrorists in lands they control and if they don’t we can kill the terrorists with drone strikes like we did with al-Zawahiri. So I opposed waging war against the Taliban because it wasn’t the best way to achieve objectives 2 and 3.
I don’t know about 2 but I think waging war against the Taliban would accomplish 3. Afghanistan is now a haven for Al Qaeda and Islamic State Khorasan too. We’ll see how your pessimism on waging war on terror fares for the world.
Once again, our NATO partners had major terrorist attacks while NATO had Afghanistan under control. Our other close ally, Israel, had their 9/11 after we had waged a GWOT for 20 years killing tens of thousands of terrorists. Trump made the right call…and Biden had wanted to get out of Afghanistan since 2009 when Obama made the mistake of keeping Gates as SecDef.
So you deny that Afghanistan serves effectively as a launching pad for international terrorism??
And she can grow a beard.
Or Boebert.