The 'organ' is brilliant...thank you for sharing. I continue to struggle to understand 1) why the administration took such a cavalier approach to the evacuations. Was the original plan simply to exit the country quickly to avoid US casualties and assume no one would notice the stranded allies? Even after slow-walking the paperwork, when the Afghan army folded, why didn't mass evacuations occur with processing done in a safe location? If the cruelty was the point with the Trump administration, what is the point with the Biden administration? There's no way that an evacuation would be smooth and orderly...that was always gaslighting, but it didn't have to be this bad. I feel as though I'm missing a piece of the puzzle. 2) I don't understand why the media didn't provide 24/7 coverage when Trump literally surrendered our Kurdish allies to Turkey over a phone call with Erdogan. We left 100K allies behind, Kurdish troops were slaughtered. Why didn't those actions receive the same level of media scrutiny? Am I comparing apples to oranges, or is it just that we expected no better from Trump, but expected much more from Biden?
I didn't get to see the caverns but I really want to make a day trip!
There are so many questions about how this evacuation was handled. One of the proposals backed by some in Congress in recent months would have had refugees moved to Guam
for processing. It seems clear they thought the Taliban would take much longer. There are still a bunch of questions in spite of that including one I find quite worrisome - how was our intelligence so terrible?
As far as your second question, there was just ***so much*** major news and scandal during the Trump era. A lot of stories didn't get the attention they deserved. Still, both before and after Trump, I don't think the War On Terror (Wars On Terror?) ever got the attention they deserved. Our country was at war for decades. So many lives were lost. They basically became background noise and were almost not even named. Now, we're days out from the longest war in our history, and it's already fading from the headlines.
Yes, I recall that the mayor of Guam offered it as a processing center, but it was discarded as a viable alternative for unspecified reasons. I've listened to Craig whitlock discuss his new book, "The Afghan Papers" about the extent to which knowledge about how poorly the war was going almost from the start. Because of the dire circumstances of their lives, the Afghans were often illiterate, unable to count, governed by corrupt leadership in the government and military, to whom they understandably had no loyalty. The high casualties suffered by the Afghan forces over the years was due in part to poor skills (not lack of will or bravery). The Afghan special forces were an exception, as were the translators, interpreters, etc. All this to say that the pretense of a quasi-democratic government and Independent army was largely illusory. I also listened to an interview that speculated that General Milley and others, having presided over the withdrawal from (Iraq, I think), which was complete with handshakes, and speeches, may have expected a similar outcome. No one person is to blame, but decades of false narratives about Afghanistan as a success story affected the withdrawal decisions. You're right of course...too much news...too limited bandwidth. We've all largely forgotten the attempted assault on the Library of Congress a week or two ago. Now we're dealing with a SCOTUS that doesn't even pretend to be influenced by stare decisis, so where does that leave the rule of law?
Yes! The Afghan papers is vital for undersranding what a mess this was throughout. I am *still* alarmed we had such bad intel in a country where we had troops on the ground. There's really not much of an excuse for it.
The Library bomber was obviously not the real deal, but I thought it was very notable how he was trying to call/inspire others to DC. Now we see similar rhetoric from Cawthorn as noted in this roundup. This is so dangerous. At some point these calls could inspire real action. We're only eight months out from January 6th, another event we don't talk nearly enough about!
I am hardly a Court expert but I find my pal @nycsouthpaw and Chris Geidner to be vital SCOTUS follows.
The 'organ' is brilliant...thank you for sharing. I continue to struggle to understand 1) why the administration took such a cavalier approach to the evacuations. Was the original plan simply to exit the country quickly to avoid US casualties and assume no one would notice the stranded allies? Even after slow-walking the paperwork, when the Afghan army folded, why didn't mass evacuations occur with processing done in a safe location? If the cruelty was the point with the Trump administration, what is the point with the Biden administration? There's no way that an evacuation would be smooth and orderly...that was always gaslighting, but it didn't have to be this bad. I feel as though I'm missing a piece of the puzzle. 2) I don't understand why the media didn't provide 24/7 coverage when Trump literally surrendered our Kurdish allies to Turkey over a phone call with Erdogan. We left 100K allies behind, Kurdish troops were slaughtered. Why didn't those actions receive the same level of media scrutiny? Am I comparing apples to oranges, or is it just that we expected no better from Trump, but expected much more from Biden?
I didn't get to see the caverns but I really want to make a day trip!
There are so many questions about how this evacuation was handled. One of the proposals backed by some in Congress in recent months would have had refugees moved to Guam
for processing. It seems clear they thought the Taliban would take much longer. There are still a bunch of questions in spite of that including one I find quite worrisome - how was our intelligence so terrible?
As far as your second question, there was just ***so much*** major news and scandal during the Trump era. A lot of stories didn't get the attention they deserved. Still, both before and after Trump, I don't think the War On Terror (Wars On Terror?) ever got the attention they deserved. Our country was at war for decades. So many lives were lost. They basically became background noise and were almost not even named. Now, we're days out from the longest war in our history, and it's already fading from the headlines.
Yes, I recall that the mayor of Guam offered it as a processing center, but it was discarded as a viable alternative for unspecified reasons. I've listened to Craig whitlock discuss his new book, "The Afghan Papers" about the extent to which knowledge about how poorly the war was going almost from the start. Because of the dire circumstances of their lives, the Afghans were often illiterate, unable to count, governed by corrupt leadership in the government and military, to whom they understandably had no loyalty. The high casualties suffered by the Afghan forces over the years was due in part to poor skills (not lack of will or bravery). The Afghan special forces were an exception, as were the translators, interpreters, etc. All this to say that the pretense of a quasi-democratic government and Independent army was largely illusory. I also listened to an interview that speculated that General Milley and others, having presided over the withdrawal from (Iraq, I think), which was complete with handshakes, and speeches, may have expected a similar outcome. No one person is to blame, but decades of false narratives about Afghanistan as a success story affected the withdrawal decisions. You're right of course...too much news...too limited bandwidth. We've all largely forgotten the attempted assault on the Library of Congress a week or two ago. Now we're dealing with a SCOTUS that doesn't even pretend to be influenced by stare decisis, so where does that leave the rule of law?
Yes! The Afghan papers is vital for undersranding what a mess this was throughout. I am *still* alarmed we had such bad intel in a country where we had troops on the ground. There's really not much of an excuse for it.
The Library bomber was obviously not the real deal, but I thought it was very notable how he was trying to call/inspire others to DC. Now we see similar rhetoric from Cawthorn as noted in this roundup. This is so dangerous. At some point these calls could inspire real action. We're only eight months out from January 6th, another event we don't talk nearly enough about!
I am hardly a Court expert but I find my pal @nycsouthpaw and Chris Geidner to be vital SCOTUS follows.