The Elephant in the room. Afghanistan

Here’s the thing.  The ONLY people who knows anything about what is currently happening are the people involved in the decision making and those who gathered the data used to make the decisions period.  

Everything else is pure speculations by “armchair quarterbacks” like Kissinger who has been out of the game for years. The dude’s 98 no wonder I thought he was dead.  

My favorite saying these days are “what I would have done/what should have been done” made by individuals who “were not in the room” when the decisions were made or what data was available at the time the decisions were made.  The fact is they don’t know what they would have decided because they weren’t looking at the data that the decision makers were looking at when the decisions were made.  

All this speculation and opinions by the “armchair quarterbacks” is not helpful.

There are certainly questions that need to be answered.  Two come to mind, how come we didn’t know or see the that Afghan Army was going to collapse as quickly as it did and was there a better way to get folks out of Afghanistan without all this chaos?  And there are many more questions involving both the Biden Administration and trump administration that needs to be answered.

And this is what Congress, as part of their oversight duties, needs to do once we are completely out of Afghanistan.

As to Kissinger having a brilliant mind, nah, I lived through his “statesmanship” during the Vietnam war and it’s was my classmates that went and fought in that war.  So no, I’m not a fan.

Why would the allies want to stay if the US pulled out?    If the allies wanted to stay they had ample time to bring in their own planes and addition troops.

As far as leaving, the allies had ample time gather up their stuff and leave since Biden announced in April we would be out by 9/1,  not that we would hang around and then pull up stakes and leave all at once on 9/11. 

To be fair here the United States and their allies help build/train/weaponize an Afghan army of over 300,000 people before deciding to pull up stakes and leaving .  trump did not do that when he decided to leave the Kurds on their own.   He just left period.  So IMO there is no comparison.  

From the Washington Post….

Opinion by Jennifer Rubin
Columnist
Today at 12:03 p.m. EDT

“Republicans have latched on to a series of both foreign and domestic policies that will set the stage for their 2022 campaigns. Weirdly, their positions turn out to be starkly at odds with a majority of voters.

On foreign policy, some Republicans, in search of a way to deflect blame from their cult leader who cut a surrender agreement with the Taliban and drew down troops to 2,500, would now have voters believe it was all a ruse. Sure, they argue, Donald Trump ran on ending the war, but that was a lie. This is their excuse? That he was going to continue the forever war he ran against?

It seems Republicans are returning to the position that we should never leave Afghanistan, one at odds with most Americans. Even more striking, Republicans are already beating the drum to limit entry of Afghan allies, which 80 percent of Americans disagree with. The GOP message boils down to: Stay forever, and if not, don’t take Afghans with us. Most voters want out and want to take as many Afghan allies as possible. In fact, they think the Biden team is not doing enough to evacuate Afghans.”

Sounds about right….

Pentagon Briefing…..

* 12 Servicemen killed , 15 injured.

* US will go after those behind today’s attack.

* US will prepare for additional attacks.

* US had shared information with the Taliban and that may have prevented other attacks.