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I thought that was the most impressive speech Biden's ever given (that I have heard).

I don't think this withdrawal was well executed, but I have waited a long time to hear a President get up to a podium to say "enough is enough" w.r.t. our occupy democracy foreign policy in the middle east.
 
chop2chip said:
I thought that was the most impressive speech Biden's ever given (that I have heard).

I don't think this withdrawal was well executed, but I have waited a long time to hear a President get up to a podium to say "enough is enough" w.r.t. our occupy democracy foreign policy in the middle east.
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In some ways it was an impressive speech. But it was also a deeply dishonest one. He painted the situation as if there were just two choices. It's hard to make a simple case for the middle third option (actually there are a whole range of middle options), but imo that's where the best option lies.

There is a French phrase--simplificateur terrible--that applies here. He refused to acknowledge a whole range of options because they are complicated and messy and hard to explain to the public.
 
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nsacpi said:
It was a disingenuous speech. We had many options. But none of them would tie everything up in a neat bow. Life aint that tidy. You choose from messy somewhat unsatisfactory options.
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He addressed some of my concerns (i.e., why they couldn't have done more to evacuate more people ahead of time). I agree with this general point though.

The explanation point, which I am shocked he had the balls to say, is when he stated "we have spent 20 years and a trillion dollars to train their army, and if they can't bother to fight for their freedom, then spending another 20 years and a trillion dollars isn't going to help".
 
nsacpi said:
In some ways it was an impressive speech. But it was also a deeply dishonest one. He painted the situation as if there were just two choices.
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He's speaking to 300 million people (plus the rest of the world). Simplicity in the message is more important than being comprehensiveness.
 
He avoided any discussion of the obvious operational failures.

Just saying we had to leave isn't justification for the disaster that is taking place.
 
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Looks like they drugged him up enough to give a ten minute speech that answered no important questions the American people have.

This is what America has come to.
 
chop2chip said:
The explanation point, which I am shocked he had the balls to say, is when he stated "we have spent 20 years and a trillion dollars to train their army, and if they can't bother to fight for their freedom, then spending another 20 years and a trillion dollars isn't going to help".
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Oh that part of the speech will undoubtedly resound favorably with most people. But imo good rhetoric deployed in the service of bad policy is worse than bad rhetoric.
 
nsacpi said:
Oh that part of the speech will undoubtedly resound favorably with most people. But imo good rhetoric deployed in the service of bad policy is worse than bad rhetoric.
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Yeah - Results on the field matter much more than rhetoric.

Welcome to the club.
 
nsacpi said:
Oh that part of the speech will undoubtedly resound favorably with most people. But imo good rhetoric deployed in the service of bad policy is worse than bad rhetoric.
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I don't understand how the alternative could be good policy, if you accept the rhetoric at face value.
 
chop2chip said:
I don't understand how the alternative could be good policy, if you accept the rhetoric at face value.
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Josh Gerson in his op-ed makes the case for a middle course.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...n-catastrophe/

money quote:

The United States’ war in Afghanistan formally ended in 2014. The maintenance of a few thousand troops to support the Afghan military and conduct counterterrorist operations had a cost. But that cost was minimal compared with the price of the Taliban’s complete triumph in Afghanistan — the humanitarian disaster, the harm to American credibility, the destabilizing flow of refugees, the morale boost for Islamism and the likely incubation of new terrorist threats.

Keeping our commitment in Afghanistan — a small commitment for a superpower — would not have been “kicking the can” down the road. It would have been the wise, sustainable, realistic use of U.S. resources to avoid disaster. The United States has many foreign policy and military commitments that are useful but not ideal or final.
 
nsacpi said:
Josh Gerson in his op-ed makes the case for a middle course.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...n-catastrophe/

money quote:

The United States’ war in Afghanistan formally ended in 2014. The maintenance of a few thousand troops to support the Afghan military and conduct counterterrorist operations had a cost. But that cost was minimal compared with the price of the Taliban’s complete triumph in Afghanistan — the humanitarian disaster, the harm to American credibility, the destabilizing flow of refugees, the morale boost for Islamism and the likely incubation of new terrorist threats.

Keeping our commitment in Afghanistan — a small commitment for a superpower — would not have been “kicking the can” down the road. It would have been the wise, sustainable, realistic use of U.S. resources to avoid disaster. The United States has many foreign policy and military commitments that are useful but not ideal or final.
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If Afghanistan was a permanent status quo then sure maybe this approach could work and maybe it’s worth it. But what happens when thing inevitably escalate? Do we send in more troops? Do we spend more money?

The status quo has been our policy for 20 years and it literally achieved nothing of permanence.
 
chop2chip said:
If Afghanistan was a permanent status quo then sure maybe this approach could work and maybe it’s worth it. But what happens when thing inevitably escalate? Do we send in more troops? Do we spend more money?

The status quo has been our policy for 20 years and it literally achieved nothing of permanence.
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Afghanistan is probably the world's messiest place in a world that is generally messy. There is no neat tidy solution. We have a lot of open-ended commitments. Like any of the other commitments, our commitment to Afghanistan is always contingent and subject to review. As of the start of this year, the cost-benefit appeared to favor staying with about three to five thousand troops mostly for the purpose of providing close air support. But the die is cast.
 
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It was a clever speech. The big criticism of the Biden administration is how this withdrawal was done. The failure to have an orderly wind down. The utter incapability of the administration to see what was unfolding until it was too late. But that's not what Biden argued against.

Biden argued against continuing the war indefinitely. He argued that because he had a stronger argument that he's right about ending the war than he does defending his handling of the actual withdrawal. This is a red herring. It's a logical fallacy. The speech was written to shift attention away from the issue of the bungled withdrawal and onto the issue of continuing to throw American resources and lives into Afghanistan. It gave him a chance to try to emotionally connect with people and say "I did it to protect our children" and to try to look presidential in saying the buck stops with him.

But no amount of arguing that a withdrawal must take place is an effective defense of how the withdrawal is taking place.

It's clear Biden's team knows he's incredibly vulnerable on what happened today. There was no way to defend it without making it seem like he's trying to shift the blame or just giving excuses. So the decision was to sidestep that issue and shift the focus to something they felt they could win in. A clever tactic that will work on many.
 
chop2chip said:
If Afghanistan was a permanent status quo then sure maybe this approach could work and maybe it’s worth it. But what happens when thing inevitably escalate? Do we send in more troops? Do we spend more money?

The status quo has been our policy for 20 years and it literally achieved nothing of permanence.
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What do you mean? It enriched thousands of lifelong bureaucrats permenantly
 
nsacpi said:
Afghanistan is probably the world's messiest place in a world that is generally messy. There is no neat tidy solution. We have a lot of open-ended commitments. Like any of the other commitments, our commitment to Afghanistan is always contingent and subject to review. As of the start of this year, the cost-benefit appeared to favor staying with about three to five thousand troops mostly for the purpose of providing close air support. But the die is cast.
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I have zero issue with this proposal in a vacuum, but what we have seen (again for 20 years) is this repeated history of kicking the can down the road because its easier politically to not risk having a messy withdrawal.

I have a lot of sympathy for what's happening in Afghanistan right now and I'm not oblivious to the ramifications of a Taliban regime that's going to be friendly to terrorist groups. But this isn't our problem forever.
 
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