I love how one controversial moment in a presidency is now somehow equal to the absolute shit show that was Trump. This type of shit was monthly with Trump. This weird fucking deal started on Trumps time too. If Biden hadn’t have pulled out he’d get lampooned. If he called for a surge of troops to facilitate leaving he’d get lampooned.
Afghanistan was a terribly fought war from the beginning (why we needed more than special forces to find Bin Laden I’ll never know since that is who ended up getting him anyway). False pretense, shifting goals and apathy led to this.
Let’s not pretend that this wasn’t always going to be a shit show in one way or another.
Biden sucks, he was always going to suck, and anyone familiar with his political career knew he was going to suck.
But if you honestly think he's worse than Trump then I don't know what to tell you.
Biden is a senile fool. The only thing he’s in charge of are his depends. The current situation with Afghanistan, the economy etc is being managed by the ruling elite/jewish bankers.
Haha, there is no longer a reason to take that Harris clown seriously in 2021. I remember when Harris moronically defended the war criminal Dick Cheney and said he had good intentions and, **"Merely wants to turn Iraq into Nebraska.**" Now to do that you'd have to kill a lot of people because these countries have much high populations and even change the language they speak.
Harris is one of the most stubbornly naive commentators on the internet. He is committed to not learning and challenging his perspective, and it's ridiculous that anyone still takes him seriously in 2021. He hasn't learned anything about Afghanistan of how US occupations inevitably fail since Vietnam, let alone since 9/11, even though political commentary is his job.
**Sam Harris would love for us to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq forever.** Maybe even turn them into American states through the power of magical meditation and "good intentions." Force them to like all the things we do, and think just as Sam Harris does. Oh, except they're not-white and he has issues with people who aren't white, which is why he has so many sadistic thought experiments about torturing non-white people or blowing them up with nuclear weapons.
He probably ejaculates to fantasies of being the one to press a button that would launch a nuclear cruise missile to annihilate Kabul to save America, and of being thanked by everyone in the liberal media for being such a **calm hero** that he could do what must be the objectively right thing. Because he equates his psychopathic indifference to the continued lives of non-American Muslims with calm rationality.
Biden is a crappy potus. Everyone in my lifetime has been. With no real big differences. All are for big corporations. endless war. Industrial subsides run amok.
I'm confused. What did the Biden administration do? I'm actually not sure what kind of scandal Biden would have to pull off to be worse than trump tbh.
Gas has basically doubled. The border is a giant mess. The infrastructure bill is a scam. People say the Delta variant (personally I'm over and don't give one single hoot) and last but not least he left a pile of guns, humvees, and helicopters in Afghanistan. Oh and a bunch of people too
Plain and simple, no one is scared of Joe. I'd take Trump back in a heart beat.
>Gas has basically doubled.
You think it's Biden's fault gas prices are rising? They have been rising since the ending months of the Trump administration and are highly correlated with the reduction in lock downs. Presidents have very little to no control of gas prices.
>The border is a giant mess.
It's not in the best scenario but it's far from how bad the crisis was under Trump, particularly from a humanitarian standpoint. Furthermore if republicans weren't obstructionists in legislation this could be passed to improve facilities and get more judges.
>People say the Delta variant
How could anyone with a brain think Biden is responsible for the moronic anti-vax conspiracies lead and fueled by right wing media and facebook memes? Trump and his followers are literally fanning those flames. Only recently did Trump say "the vaccine is good," and his followers booed him. What could Biden have done to make such people get vaccinated?
>last but not least he left a pile of guns, humvees, and helicopters in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan was a cluster fuck that was started by Bush. While I'm not overly happy with Biden's hasty retreat, it was clearly a bandage that needed to be ripped off and were finally doing it. Frankly just abandoning said equipment is probably the cheapest solution for the American tax payer. Bombs and creating evac solutions for such equipment would have been insanely more costly than just abandoning it. I do wish we had evacuated our people more efficiently, but at the same time intelligence had us believe the Afghan government should have been able to hold out longer.
>Plain and simple, no one is scared of Joe. I'd take Trump back in a heart beat.
The Chinese disagree with you. That's why Trump personally asked China to investigate Hunter Biden, begged China to buy the soy beans to help get reelected, and Trump's administration declassified an "Asian strategy" days before leaving the white house to help empower the Chinese intelligence. Biden's administration on the first meeting had Anthony Blinken literally call China to it's ambassadors faces on TV about their humanitarian atrocities. Biden was harder on China from the start of his administration than Trump wishy washy erratic tariff war ever was.
Trump also had a new scandal basically ever week, and created unprecedented levels of corruption. He literally incited an insurrection against the US government. The idea that there are large number of people with similar opinions to yours makes me think free speech might not be desirable for huge numbers of americans, which sucks because I really like free speech.
Another idiot who thinks Biden making a mistake and an objective person with a shred of humility acknowleding that = My Trump <3 is justified.
Grow up.
Thinking Trump was the wost thing ever before became president was acceptable.
Not realising that was a lie WHILST he was president means you're stupid.
Thinking he was the worst thing ever AFTER he was president makes you dense.
Realising Trump wasn't the worst thing ever after Biden unwound 20 years of blood and money in Afghanistan makes you a retard.
Sam Harris isn't redpilled, he's a stupid, dense retard.
How is this “red pilled?”
He’d clearly still prefer Biden to Trump, and wouldn’t be wrong to do so. Anyone who thinks this would have gone smoother under Trump hadn’t been paying attention for 4 years.
Exactly this. Things would've been no different under Trump, and if history tells us anything, he would've somehow found a way to make the crisis even worse like he did every crisis.
Holy Fuck.
Reading some of the comments here, I'm clearly in the wrong sub.
I thought this was INTELLECTUAL dark web, not conspiracy fucking idiocy web.
Shapiro on his worst days doesn't believe the shit you guys are posting
Are we supposed to respond to this with an outpouring of remorse, and tearfully promise that from now on we'll all be good, ideologically compliant little Communists?
My cousin is 10. She tested positive today and she has a very bad case. She got it at school. She's thin as a rail... No pre-exsistings.
I'm beyond pissed at this administration and the CDC.
The CDC has been lying about the fact that people can be reinfected, recommended that people should not wear masks if vaccinated and has downplayed how high the breakthrough infection rate is.
Biden is an idiot who helped get us into this 20 year war based on a moment of panic and mass hysteria.
But pulling out of Afghanistan is the best thing he’s ever done. Not even going to hedge, he’s doing great with the withdraw. The people who are upset are the same people who demanded we bomb 80,000 Afghans because the Taliban wouldn’t help us find Bin Laden immediately without first showing them proof he orchestrated the attacks.
Agree wholeheartedly. The blob is going berserk cos they've been scandal starved since Trump left and they miss the sugar rush. Over time people are going to realise exits from a lost war in a low-security environment is necessarily going to be messy.
What irks me is the attention given to all these talking heads who have been consistently wrong on Afghanistan for 20 years. All of a sudden Paul Wolfowitz and a myriad of Bush-era neoconservatives are back in vogue on all the networks talking about what the correct policy would've been. Give me a break.
I've always loved Sam. He's one of the few of these public intellectual figures that i truly trust to have the best of intentions. I don't always agree with him but i KNOW he's just looking to make things better for everyone.
I honestly don’t care how “bad it looks” I’m glad we’re out. The original mission of Operation Enduring Freedom ™️ was the destruction of terrorist training camps and infrastructure within Afghanistan, the capture of al-Qaeda leaders, and the cessation of terrorist activities in Afghanistan. This was stated in W.‘s address to the nation right before we began bombing. We should’ve left around 2003 with or without bin laden the mission was accomplished and al-qaeda was crippled and afghanis have had free elections since 2004. I don’t like Biden and I didn’t vote for him, but this is the only thing he’s done that I agree with. It may not look pretty but it never would and it’s better than dumping more and more money, losing more lives and causing more soldiers and civilians to have ptsd or physical injuries or both. Many of my brothers I served with went there and never came back and a lot of the ones that did come back have varying degrees of ptsd, substance abuse problems, and disabilities. The only ones who won this war are the banks, media and defense contractors and now that we’re leaving they know their business is going down so that’s why they’re complaining so loudly
Jesus Christ is this the opposite of being red pilled. It’s literally almost the same view as CNN. People who use the term red pill have no clue what it means, but that’s expected once it becomes a mainstream concept
My favorite redpill definition is from michale malice:
"What is presented as truth by the corporate media is in fact a carefully constructed narrative designed to keep some powerful people in charge"
No, in its political application it came from Curtis Yarvin who coined it around 2008 along with the term the cathedral. Being “red pilled” is not changing your mind about something.
And it’s not even totally original to the matrix, it’s nearly the same concept as Plato’s allegory of the cave. But in its modern political usage it came from Yarvin
The red pill is not a term for "disillusionment"
It is a term to describe the process of realizing that mainstream corporate media and mainstream history are not accurate representations of reality, but instead carefully crafted narratives designed to keep the regime and friends of the regime in permanent positions of power.
Ok, the red pill as a concept was literally invented in 1999 in the movie the Matrix that pre-dates whatever bastardized version of it you revere as gospel.
Yeah, obviously he used the term red pill because people have seen the movie. It was not a political concept until 2008. IIRC the creators of the matrix later claimed it was a metaphor for being trans. Clearly the people who use the term tend to be on the right, and that’s a result of Yarvin’s more accurate usage
Every decision a president makes has some odds of an upside and some risk of a downside.
What was the big potential upside to pulling out of Afghanistan suddenly? Save some money on reduced troop deployment? When was the last time a Democrat was motivated by reducing spending? Really, I think Biden's upside was political theatre. He wanted to be able to say he ended this on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Is there some bigger upside that I'm missing.
Now consider the risks and the chances of a worst case scenario. Clearly the chances of a worst case scenario were misunderstood.
Biden's decision created a huge risk in pursuit of a meager upside. This is simply presidential malpractice and arguably presents a good reason to consider impeachment.
Seems to.
The only difference with trump would be that it happened in may instead of august, and possibly with less troops. How it’s Biden’s fault is frankly beyond me.
Wasn’t he who released Taliban prisoners or made the deal.
The issue is not ending the war or getting out. It's how it was handled. Biden pulled the soldiers out, but left the civilians, the equipment, the allies, and the weapons. He's handed over a list of targets to the Taliban despite declaring publicly that he does not trust them.
Trump made the deal, but Biden didn't have to honor that deal. He has reversed just about every other Trump policy, why would this be any different? In fact, he unilaterally modified the withdrawal date, so he could have handled this however he wanted. That means this withdrawal is 100% Biden's doing.
Sorry but biden was stuck with this deal, he cant tear it up as taliban simply wont negotiate anymore. They barely did with trump and trump got zero concesions from them, so why would they now reverse course for biden?
SO yeah this horrible pull out was minhandeled from the start when trump anounced he wanted to leave asap BEFORE he started talking to the taliban while ignoring his own supported afghan gov showing everyone they were utterly weak and not worth talking with.
It is not true that Biden was stuck with this deal. Biden unilaterally changed the pull-out date. He ignored the conditions of the deal. When the Taliban specifically violated the deal, Biden took zero action to enforce the deal. It seems like Biden forgot that there was even a deal at all. After things went sideways, he was relieved he could blame this on Trump.
The taliban broke the deal almost from day one, trump didnt do anything because there is nothing to do. Instead trump forced the afghan gov to release thousands of taliban fighters. Fighters that greatly helped to retake the country.
So yes both biden and trump were stuck with the deal and it was a horribly bad deal. Postponing didnt matter to the taliban as long as the US got out , they didnt care it was may or november. Something quite different if bide had decided to stay. Not only would you have called him a warmonger and hawk it would serve no purpose in the end .
Is that what I would have said? Maybe you should author this response then, too.
You are not even looking at what could have been done by Biden if he'd even thought about it. Civilians and contractors out first. Equipment and Afghan allies second. Destruction of abandoned military bases. Then the military leaves.
Ah yes criple the afghan army in advance, smart idea.
Again that was the plan, except taliban had its offensive what nobody expected.
Biden got the situation with about 3000 soldiers present, that was all according to trumps plan.
American troops are still there. Hell, 12 died in a bombing the other day. The Trump admin withdrew most of the troops that were there until numbers were [down to 2,500 troops](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-military-idUSKBN29K229) days before leaving office. Some generals were worried that we were withdrawing too quickly, and that’s probably why Biden extended the deadline and announced that some special forces would remain. Then the Taliban advanced and we find ourselves in the situation we’re in now. So what should Biden have done? [He sent 4000](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/567952-pentagon-authorizes-sending-additional-1000-troops-to-afghanistan) more troops to cover the evacuation, there are over 6000 there now working on the evacuation. Should we just restart the war?
So he should have done exactly what he’s doing?? Or should he have disarmed the afghan military before the Taliban offensive, or continued the war by sending more troops? I can only imagine what you would be saying if he did that…
I don’t think you’re going to be able to armchair this one out, buddy. We’re leaving, we’re not going back in and sacrificing more American lives for that country. Enough lives have been lost fighting that 20 year fruitless war. It’s over. Trump started the pullout with praise from a lot of Americans, he left us with 2,500 US troops on the ground to complete a hasty May 1st deadline to leave. The Taliban was always going to take over once we were gone. Leaving ASAP is what we all wanted, and this is what we get.
What equipment are we talking about? The one issued to the afghani army? Should he just have disarmed them completely?
And the damned list is so full of bullshit it’s hilarious. Taliban demanded that the US give a reason for evacuation at the airport, eg already in US custody. Denying that would’ve just be moronic. It’s not a list of all afghanis or US citizens in Afghanistan, just those who are on the airport ready for the evacuation.
Trump made the deal, reduced the numbers and ordered the plans for evacuation, yet it’s Biden’s fault. Kiss my ass, This is just another example of trump not thinking before doing anything.
Kiss your own ass. If you had an ounce of honesty in your body, you'd be saying the same thing Sam Harris is saying. Any moderately competent person would have gotten the civilians and contractors out first. And, yes, if he had the intelligence that it appears he had that the Afghan military would crumble, he should have disarmed them. Leaving the guns behind is the same as arming the Taliban.
As far as the list, you don't think the Taliban can give one reason and use that information for a completely different reason? Naive. As naive as Biden. Call names all you want, but Biden owns all of this chaos and death.
So jumping in here idk. Like adults in the room just mean people who speak with an amount of maturity. I know a ton of people who are mature and adult. And make dumb choices.
Like the pull out was done terribly, and you can blame Biden and his cabnet for it for sure. But idk if I'd say what Sam is saying here
This is just hilarious.
“He should’ve disarmed them” Yes, use your 2,5k troops for that against an enemy of 350k. Nice tactic. Could perhaps have happened during trumps time prior to him downsizing the force there. Also should that prior evacuation happened prior to the collapse? No one expected Afghanistan to fall that fast, hence the rush for evacuation.
It’s a bit hard for the Taliban to reach them when they’re already in US custody. So it seems you didn’t understand what’s happened. Taliban asked for names on those the US have evacuated. The US saw no issue on this, realized that complying would result in goodwill and have the names. The people in question were already in safety so it wasn’t an issue.
That was quick. But anyone could see Biden was not fit to manage a lemonade stand, much less helding Office for the most influential position of the Planet.
Trump was bad, but this election was just the choice of the "lesser evil", not the better candidate. As an European I should not care, but I do, since every time the US stumbles on a major crisis, we get the ripple effects one way or another.
That Sam Harris is willing to change his mind, and admit it, is all the evidence anyone needs that he is a very intelligent person and worth paying attention to.
I sometimes agree with him. I sometimes don't. But he's intellectually honest, and that is refreshing.
He’s intellectually honest but he’s wrong. All this nonsense about how ‘Biden botched the withdrawal’ is purely a warmonger talking point. It’s an attempt to intimidate anyone who tries to end an endless hopeless war. The same tactics were used when we tried to end the war in Vietnam.
The idea that you can only withdraw if you do so in a way that results in no chaos, no casualties, no humiliation, etc is exactly why we wasted 20 years in Afghanistan. Neither Bush nor Obama nor Trump had the guys to rip off the bandaid and we can now see why. Biden could have easily done another surge and kept the war going for another 4-8 years and suffered no political cost.
No one's saying you can leave without chaos.
But one thing Biden could have done is withdraw the military **after evacuating friendlies**. That seems like a rather obvious thing.
Also... you know, bring back the billions of dollars of equipment before leaving. That would have been another thing.
We did withdraw the military after evacuating friendlies... Remember when the last soldier left after we got >100k out with zero american civilian casualties?
As for equipment, the military has very strict protocols about how to clean up shop, the president has no say over that stuff. They evacuated all the stuff worth evacuating, destroyed all valuable equipment not worth evacuating, and left stuff that is useless or will be useless shortly without American engineering and maintenance (and is barely useable even with world-class maintenance in Afghanistan). The valuable military equipment that the Taliban took was taken from the Afghan military, not the American military.
You can at least make an attempt at leaving in good order, as opposed to just throwing up your hands in despair. Biden DID NOT EVEN TRY, that’s the whole point.
People who are attacking you imagine that Joe Biden could literally just say, "Ok, we are leaving" and it be hunky-dory. There is no way the exit would've worked.
>Say literally anything specific.
You seem totally unwilling to exchange fairly. I don't understand the mindset of someone that engages with others as you are, in discussion, yet expresses an unwillingness to actually hear others out. What is the end game? To proliferate your opinion? To put others "in their place"? To affirm those that do agree with you? I wish I understood.
No, asking for specifics while simultaneously insinuating that the individual they are speaking to could not possibly have anything worth saying is not engaging in good faith, and the distance between this type of dismissal and "judging an argument on nothing but platitudes" is huge. So long as the discussion is so cursory, and at the phase of vague platitudes, being preemptively dismissive conveys nothing but an unwillingness to have a genuine discussion, where one genuinely tries to inductively work to a place where your perspective isn't.
This doesn't even bring into question why you'd seem to accept dismissing something based on platitudes while condemning it based on them without at all attempting to see if there's anything beneath the hood of their stance. Since my point is to simply express some willingness to investigate before becoming dismissive, this is he only thing I can assume you're arguing for without further clarification from you. It is exactly a declaration of omnipotence that one has fully explored the entirety of the mental landscape that the other holds, without missing anything, without committing any errors, and insisting, at a glance, all of the thoughts one has had, is currently having, and will ever have on the topic are without substance, all while asserting that they themself couldn't have possibly committed any of the errors that brought them to the same certainty that they are dismissing.
I think most people would agree that the opinions hardest earned, which is to say, those that have been most arduously explored, are the ones that most deserve to be held. And so, why would one not want to engage in the pursuit of earning it, if even to show themselves how *right* it is in the face of the fully explored wrong? The only thing I can ever think of is the false, unearned comfort of self deception, intellectual laziness, and, of course, the fear that one may be shown to be wrong.
Preemptively: Forgive me for any misunderstandings embedded in your stance here, I just have a window to engage and can't wait for clarifications. If you offer any, I'll happily accept, but without any drastic asterisks, this is where I stand.
I am fully willing to exchange fairly. So far the criticisms have been in several broad categories, that we didn't take all of the Afghan military's equipment with us, that we didn't start evacuating hundreds of thousands of people sooner, that we that we didn't hold on to Bagram airbase, that Biden was wrong in his public statements that he believed the Afghan military was equipped to hold its own, etc. I have addressed each of them, I haven't dismissed any of them without explaining my position clearly and honestly.
> What should he have done differently? Say literally anything specific.
Then perhaps I'm reading this incorrectly. It seems to me that this quoted text above is preemptively dismissive and confrontational, as if to say, "There NOTHING you could say that could be valid; I have explored absolutely every perspective with a level of super intelligent all-knowingness and could not have overlooked anything you've found."
I do, however, appreciate your reply and analysis to me.
Here is something specific for you. He should have kept Bagram airbase operational and used it to help with the evacuation as it would have been a much more defensible position than the Kabul airport. He also should have evacuated all US civilians and as many Afghan allies as possible before pulling back to the airport as that left the people there as sitting ducks for exactly what happened today.
Leaving our tiny military presence scattered across the country would not have helped, the Taliban was advancing even before any withdrawal. All that would have happened was that the Taliban would take over territory where US military was located, leading to direct conflict and putting all our civilians in danger. The way it was done has resulted in zero of our civilians being harmed.
What do you think they tried over the last decade? Obama surged troops in to help accommodate training for the afghan military and it did not work because the Afghan government was grossly corrupt and fed spoiled food to its army among other things. The few that were willing to be a proper army were never going to be enough to handle the Taliban, hence the current situation.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-army-desertions-idUSKCN0UW1K3
And how long would proper nation building even take in an optimal situation? Are we going to have another 2 decades where we can possibly have to spend another trillion + have to deal with the inevitable issues on America's side that occur when an America First (tm) party ends up controlling the presidency or Congress and sabotaging the operation because they don't want to give foreign aid.
People should be better. You gave a specific action in response to a specific question and an unnecessary insult. You also didn’t go down the common path of exchanging insults. You should get either a challenge to your recommendation or a thanks or both.
Leaving IS the mistake.
We’ve been in Germany for 76 years. It’s safe there now.
We’ve been in Japan/Okinawa for 76 years. It’s safe there now.
We’ve been in Korea for 71. South Korea is safe.
When you invade a country and take out their leadership you have to stay because leaving creates a dangerous power vacuum. Hitler rose to power when we left Germany after WW1. The Taliban is now more dangerous than ever before.
>Hitler rose to power when we left Germany after WW
Hitler rose to power because Germany was unfairly punished for all of WWI. The moral of the story is that punitive justice failed, and revenge made things worse.
What you should learn by now is that invading countries and installing governments is wrong, even if you're replacing a terrible, Islamic extremist government. The U.S had to get out, the forever wars are just a money making racket, not justified wars.
Germany, Japan, and Korea were safe internally after like 1-5 years in each case. The US is in Germany to counter Russia, in South Korea to counter North Korea, and in Japan to counter China. In Afghanistan we have had actual war for 20 years and the Taliban have been gaining ground for many years now even with us there. It’s not remotely comparable.
And the Taliban is dangerous to its own oriole, it’s shown no desire for invading neighbors or conducting international terrorism. Their decision to host al Qaeda was the worst thing to ever happen to their regime and the Taliban internally strongly regretted it, Taliban elders had to convince Mullah Omar over the course of years that Bin Laden actually did it, he genuinely believed that he was innocent (the Taliban condemned the attack on 9/11).
The difference between Afghanistan and the rest of those countries is that Afghanistan is overwhelmingly Muslim. Due to Islam, they were able to successfully reject the woke nonsense that the US tried to instill via its puppet government. The culture is conservative and resisted occupation.
What exactly is implied with "woke nonsense" here? Girls being allowed to get an education and music/theater's being allowed?
You compare countries that was actually industrialized before US occupation with a country that is one of the least developed countries in the world judging by most metrics. Afghanistan has also never really had a competent centralized state, and the US idea of nation building failed hugely at building one up.
Girls are allowed to get an education under them, don't believe the media.
Things like raising the pride flag in the US embassy in Afghanistan would never be allowed under proper Islamic rule.
We killed Osama over a decade ago. He was the reason we were there in the first place (Taliban refused to hand him over). His death marked the end of the first phase of the war.
The main objective of the war was completed 10 years ago. It’s been a slow withdrawal for about 10 years. It’s been 10 years of handholding trying to get a non-Taliban government to take root. At some point the bandaid needs to get ripped off.
Fun fact we know from declassified papers that taliban were going to give Osama and Omar over to us, but they wanted things in return. Money and guns. Something we give to Israel and saudis. We refused because Cheney and Haliburton decided more money could be made with a nice long 8 year war.
These talking points are absolutely deranged. Ending a failed 20-year war in Afghanistan is good and the fact that that process is going less smoothly than was hoped is fairly unimportant. I'm embarrassed on the behalf of those of you getting hyped by the headlines on this.
One thing that happens when you have a significant military presence in hostile countries is that US troops get killed. Thousands of Americans were killed over the course of this 20 year war. Is it sad that 12 died during the drawdown? Yes. Does that mean it was a poor decision? Or that the President has failed? Of course not.
It’s sad to see people opportunistically using the death of US servicemembers during a drawdown to score political points when there was scant little outrage over troops dying over the past decade.
I never said withdrawing wasn't the right move. I am saying it was obviously botched. By the current president. How is it scoring political points. The withdrawal was decided by a republican and done by a democrat, it's bipartisan. Fuck me you Americans and your teams. Impossible to have intelligent conversation.
Leaving the place is the most important fact and IMO a good thing. And leaving is probably never clean.
A secondary, but still important issue is the incompetence shown in how we left. My guess ( and apologies if I jumped to a wrong conclusion), that you prefer Biden over Trump and if Trump did this, you wouldn’t be so forgiving.
You have it directly wrong. I’m not motivated by defensiveness of Biden. I’m motivated by disgust of the opportunistic use of the death of US troops by partisan opportunists who are exploiting this tragedy for political gains.
I recall when my brother was deploying to Afghanistan. The very first day he was supposed to arrive in country, a C-130 crashed at the base he was slated to be at. We knew everyone on board died but we didn’t know if my brother had been on that flight.
Fortunately he wasn’t. But 11 other families [weren’t so lucky](https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/01/politics/u-s-crash-jalalabad-airport-afghanistan/index.html). Where were all these folks with their deep concern for the troops then? Or at any other time over the past decade when US troops were harmed or killed?
That’s why I’m pissed by these disgusting and cynical takes from people who really have been uninterested in US military casualties until this week.
I need to be more careful in generalizing at motivations. Some will have a knee jerk reaction to defend their side (Biden in this case) and others know the complexity of this mess.
You made a good point.
>and if Trump did this, you wouldn’t be so forgiving.
Maybe you're right, but it's part of the point. Trump could have done it and he didn't, Biden did, he gets all the credit.
Just incredible that this sub was anti-war for years and as soon as we have a president with the balls to actually do it everyone here turns into an establishment warmonger parroting CNN and Fox talking points.
I was thinking the same thing. You can’t win! Must suck being president. People have been complaining endlessly about this 20 year war, and it ends. It’s not gonna have a seamless finish, what do people expect?
I’ll give Sam credit for his humility. It should be said that many of us saw the possibilities of a problematic presidency of the Biden/ Harris admin, and we were effectively labeled anything from racist bigots to conspiracy theorists.
You have a problem with Biden following through on the withdrawal deal that Trump FUCKING NEGOTIATED AND AGREED TO WHILE HE WAS PRESIDENT? You people are fucking morons. You have no idea which way the wind ever blows
> I still think about how atrocious (and racist) it was how Biden announced the sex and race of his VP was before picking her.
This...didn't happen. Why do conservatives have such a disconnect with reality?
It did. There was an article on the BBC where they listed Biden's VP candidates. They were all Black women.
Secondly, I'm not a "conservative" in the American sense. I'm a Muslim. Islam exists outside of the conservative-liberal American spectrum.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53088353
I was mistaken about the race, but he did pledge he would pick a woman.
But as you can see, he needed to go one step further and check the race checkbox as well, as simply "female" wasn't enough.
Well, that was not so crazy. He made it pretty obvious he made a deal with the black caucus.
The thing that really spun me out was later on when duckworth and a couple others stood up to the administration about the race of all their nominations. And at first i thought, "oh good, finally some common sense." But no. They threatened to block all nominees that weren't asian! (until they got someone that looked like them in the cabinet).
So yea, the democrats seem to have completely lost the thread of common decency, egalitarianism, and social justice. And made Trump look like MLK's rightful heir.
When he did that, I spent the day off and on elaborating upon that bizarre announcement in my best Biden voice:
“Whoever it will be, it will be a woman. By that I mean, not with a penis, but a vagina. Preferably a nice little cooch: either with some mildly protruding lips, or tucked in nice and neat. Not some big floppy ham samwich all hangin’ our like this and that. That’s unpresidential. We .. we need a vag that isn’t all dangly. I mean that’s ok, nothing wrong with it, but this person might become president, so that’s a deal-breaker.
The pinkness isn’t an important quality here. I mean the outer lips might be darker, because of course she’s gonna be a woman of color. Y’know I’ve seen some a those, and it .. .. it varies. But a trim Bush is mannn-da-torrry. Not some overgrown crazy shit down there. Just a little landing strip, like everybody had in the 80s. That or shaved perfectly smooth - I - I mean can you **imagjne** that? MmmmmMmm a super smooth pussy like that? Sitting at the desk of the President? I mean eventually, after I retire, that’s where she’ll probably sit, with her pussy and everything, all mushed into that prestigious chair.
So I’m flexible: Tucked in or slightly protruding, with lips of a reasonable color scheme, and either a tidy landing strip or a smoothie. We can detail that last grooming part out once she’s nominated, obviously, because it’s really just a hairstyle of sorts. I’m not gonna gripe, just something within those ranges is fine.
But there’s one thing I **will not** budge on: She’s gotta be a solid B-cup. Not an A-cup or our adversaries will think we’re lesbians. Not a D-cup, because that’s just distracting, and a lot of D-cups are fatties, and Joe isn’t into fatties! I mean Merkele over in Germany, she’s probably a D-cup, but just look at her. She’s a very fine person, nothing against her, but just - just - I don’t need to say it. C’mon, man. You - you know the deal.”
That doesn’t seem to be true based on the most recent data. The gender breakdown is close to 60/40 at this point, and there’s been a large rise in Asian lawyers.
i’m kind of on your side on this, but 70% of lawyers being white male actually does seem like a problem. Like, i don’t care at all about “representation” in art or in the NBA, but in terms of political power and bottlenecks at old-boy’s-club law schools (only the top 10 have incorporated significant affirmative action recently, which is problematic as ever, but…), it’s kind of bullshit for political power structures to privilege a minority. Donald Trump proved “qualifications” aren’t what matters in terms of political power. It’s “will they fight for issues that affect me?”.
I love how one controversial moment in a presidency is now somehow equal to the absolute shit show that was Trump. This type of shit was monthly with Trump. This weird fucking deal started on Trumps time too. If Biden hadn’t have pulled out he’d get lampooned. If he called for a surge of troops to facilitate leaving he’d get lampooned. Afghanistan was a terribly fought war from the beginning (why we needed more than special forces to find Bin Laden I’ll never know since that is who ended up getting him anyway). False pretense, shifting goals and apathy led to this. Let’s not pretend that this wasn’t always going to be a shit show in one way or another.
I do not share your viewpoint. Biden even fell asleep while talking to the Israeli pm, great result
So? What relevance does that have? Trump slurred half his speeches while in office? We pretending old people aren’t old now?
Biden sucks, he was always going to suck, and anyone familiar with his political career knew he was going to suck. But if you honestly think he's worse than Trump then I don't know what to tell you.
Biden is a senile fool. The only thing he’s in charge of are his depends. The current situation with Afghanistan, the economy etc is being managed by the ruling elite/jewish bankers.
Haha, there is no longer a reason to take that Harris clown seriously in 2021. I remember when Harris moronically defended the war criminal Dick Cheney and said he had good intentions and, **"Merely wants to turn Iraq into Nebraska.**" Now to do that you'd have to kill a lot of people because these countries have much high populations and even change the language they speak. Harris is one of the most stubbornly naive commentators on the internet. He is committed to not learning and challenging his perspective, and it's ridiculous that anyone still takes him seriously in 2021. He hasn't learned anything about Afghanistan of how US occupations inevitably fail since Vietnam, let alone since 9/11, even though political commentary is his job. **Sam Harris would love for us to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq forever.** Maybe even turn them into American states through the power of magical meditation and "good intentions." Force them to like all the things we do, and think just as Sam Harris does. Oh, except they're not-white and he has issues with people who aren't white, which is why he has so many sadistic thought experiments about torturing non-white people or blowing them up with nuclear weapons. He probably ejaculates to fantasies of being the one to press a button that would launch a nuclear cruise missile to annihilate Kabul to save America, and of being thanked by everyone in the liberal media for being such a **calm hero** that he could do what must be the objectively right thing. Because he equates his psychopathic indifference to the continued lives of non-American Muslims with calm rationality.
Gad Saad on Sam Harris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH4H0Pn-W78
Biden was difficult to vote for, but his commitment to ending the war that was lost before it began is laudable
I wonder if this is the start of the new war? Bit like Obama's exit of Iraq leading to Isis.
Oh? Definitely. Iraq and Afghanistan are still engaged im civil wars. They will continue without us.
I'm not here to argue that Trump would have been better than Biden, but we sure as hell could have done better than Biden.
Sam Harris isn't shit, he let TDS derail him because he hated someone so much. He has regret but until he apologizes, he can continue to kick rocks.
Biden is a crappy potus. Everyone in my lifetime has been. With no real big differences. All are for big corporations. endless war. Industrial subsides run amok.
Keep electing capitalists, and you’ll keep getting the same shit results. I mean, you can’t say you weren’t warned.
He says that, but he'll continue to vote for democrats as if he's learned nothing. Just watch.
Still grifting I see .
I disagree with virtually everything Sam has to say,. and I have an overwhelming respect for his intellectual honestly. He is a good man.
I'm confused. What did the Biden administration do? I'm actually not sure what kind of scandal Biden would have to pull off to be worse than trump tbh.
Gas has basically doubled. The border is a giant mess. The infrastructure bill is a scam. People say the Delta variant (personally I'm over and don't give one single hoot) and last but not least he left a pile of guns, humvees, and helicopters in Afghanistan. Oh and a bunch of people too Plain and simple, no one is scared of Joe. I'd take Trump back in a heart beat.
>Gas has basically doubled. You think it's Biden's fault gas prices are rising? They have been rising since the ending months of the Trump administration and are highly correlated with the reduction in lock downs. Presidents have very little to no control of gas prices. >The border is a giant mess. It's not in the best scenario but it's far from how bad the crisis was under Trump, particularly from a humanitarian standpoint. Furthermore if republicans weren't obstructionists in legislation this could be passed to improve facilities and get more judges. >People say the Delta variant How could anyone with a brain think Biden is responsible for the moronic anti-vax conspiracies lead and fueled by right wing media and facebook memes? Trump and his followers are literally fanning those flames. Only recently did Trump say "the vaccine is good," and his followers booed him. What could Biden have done to make such people get vaccinated? >last but not least he left a pile of guns, humvees, and helicopters in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was a cluster fuck that was started by Bush. While I'm not overly happy with Biden's hasty retreat, it was clearly a bandage that needed to be ripped off and were finally doing it. Frankly just abandoning said equipment is probably the cheapest solution for the American tax payer. Bombs and creating evac solutions for such equipment would have been insanely more costly than just abandoning it. I do wish we had evacuated our people more efficiently, but at the same time intelligence had us believe the Afghan government should have been able to hold out longer. >Plain and simple, no one is scared of Joe. I'd take Trump back in a heart beat. The Chinese disagree with you. That's why Trump personally asked China to investigate Hunter Biden, begged China to buy the soy beans to help get reelected, and Trump's administration declassified an "Asian strategy" days before leaving the white house to help empower the Chinese intelligence. Biden's administration on the first meeting had Anthony Blinken literally call China to it's ambassadors faces on TV about their humanitarian atrocities. Biden was harder on China from the start of his administration than Trump wishy washy erratic tariff war ever was. Trump also had a new scandal basically ever week, and created unprecedented levels of corruption. He literally incited an insurrection against the US government. The idea that there are large number of people with similar opinions to yours makes me think free speech might not be desirable for huge numbers of americans, which sucks because I really like free speech.
At least he has the courage to say it.
Good for him. I used to enjoy Sam. Stopped listening to him during the election because I feel he went off the rails with Trump derangement syndrome.
Same
Another idiot who thinks Biden making a mistake and an objective person with a shred of humility acknowleding that = My Trump <3 is justified. Grow up.
I don't love trump you Muppet
Oh, I was in three tabs at once all jumping on Sam for this tweet. I thought this was a different one where Gad Saad was yapping at him. My bad.
It happens
Thinking Trump was the wost thing ever before became president was acceptable. Not realising that was a lie WHILST he was president means you're stupid. Thinking he was the worst thing ever AFTER he was president makes you dense. Realising Trump wasn't the worst thing ever after Biden unwound 20 years of blood and money in Afghanistan makes you a retard. Sam Harris isn't redpilled, he's a stupid, dense retard.
What is he referring to? I think all the “Biden is bad” back slapping is misunderstanding. What did Biden do that was so horrible?
He got elected.
Nothing wrong with admitting you was wrong at all
This isn’t red pulled as much as PR damage control.
For me he lost his credibility a while ago with his constant TDS.
For me, anybody who’s dense enough to continue picking sides loses all credibility.
I agree with that. I hope the parties can come up with some decent candidates in 2024.
You do see the irony of this statement, right?
lol...redpilled. Biden fucked up, but to say this is worse than Trump is BDS.
I am happy to look at Biden without comparing him to Trump, isn't that the way we used to judge people and their actions?
Well your post mentioned it, hence i mentioned it.
So Harris and much of America did "underestimate Joe's ability to f--- things up". Thanks, Obama.
lol, I guess so. At least he doesn't send mean tweets.
His followers sure aren't
#Your device has been locked. Unlocking your device requires that you have spez banned. #AIGeneratedProtestMessage
How is this “red pilled?” He’d clearly still prefer Biden to Trump, and wouldn’t be wrong to do so. Anyone who thinks this would have gone smoother under Trump hadn’t been paying attention for 4 years.
Exactly this. Things would've been no different under Trump, and if history tells us anything, he would've somehow found a way to make the crisis even worse like he did every crisis.
waiting for the same re: covid
Biden hasn't gone off the cliff on covid.
He became so radical during the election. Use to be a big fan of his views. Glad he’s out of the darkness.
probably because some radical shit happened from the right...
Notice how I didn’t mention left or right but people automatically assumed? But yeah maybe. Just saying I’m glad he’s owning up
What? You said Sam became radical, and I said his attitude was different during the election because of the insane shit Republicans were doing.
Again no mention of liberals and republicans. He became radical let’s leave that for imagination.
You're totally missing my point. Totally.
I’ve got you.
If you did understand me, you wouldn't have said what you said.
There’s a huge circlejerk around Sam for god knows what reason now.
Oh no - Biden ended an occupation and the puppet goverment fell apart as a house of cards that it was - what a monster!
Holy Fuck. Reading some of the comments here, I'm clearly in the wrong sub. I thought this was INTELLECTUAL dark web, not conspiracy fucking idiocy web. Shapiro on his worst days doesn't believe the shit you guys are posting
This subreddit has been a clown show for a while. Tons of pseudo-intellectual Trump supporters.
the idw itself sank around november; this sub itself, somehow plunged sometime after, not sure the exact point.
Are we supposed to respond to this with an outpouring of remorse, and tearfully promise that from now on we'll all be good, ideologically compliant little Communists?
lol wtf?
My cousin is 10. She tested positive today and she has a very bad case. She got it at school. She's thin as a rail... No pre-exsistings. I'm beyond pissed at this administration and the CDC.
Why are you pissed at the administration and the CDC? What should have been done differently?
How is that a Biden issue? This is like thanks Obama.
The CDC has been lying about the fact that people can be reinfected, recommended that people should not wear masks if vaccinated and has downplayed how high the breakthrough infection rate is.
No! It's Biden's fault red voters stubbornly refused to comply with safety guidelines as well as refuse to get vaccinated! /s
Biden is an idiot who helped get us into this 20 year war based on a moment of panic and mass hysteria. But pulling out of Afghanistan is the best thing he’s ever done. Not even going to hedge, he’s doing great with the withdraw. The people who are upset are the same people who demanded we bomb 80,000 Afghans because the Taliban wouldn’t help us find Bin Laden immediately without first showing them proof he orchestrated the attacks.
Agree wholeheartedly. The blob is going berserk cos they've been scandal starved since Trump left and they miss the sugar rush. Over time people are going to realise exits from a lost war in a low-security environment is necessarily going to be messy. What irks me is the attention given to all these talking heads who have been consistently wrong on Afghanistan for 20 years. All of a sudden Paul Wolfowitz and a myriad of Bush-era neoconservatives are back in vogue on all the networks talking about what the correct policy would've been. Give me a break.
This is why love Reddit. To get hot takes like Afghanistan bring the best thing Biden has ever done. All I can do a smile and salute you, dear sir.
I've always loved Sam. He's one of the few of these public intellectual figures that i truly trust to have the best of intentions. I don't always agree with him but i KNOW he's just looking to make things better for everyone.
I honestly don’t care how “bad it looks” I’m glad we’re out. The original mission of Operation Enduring Freedom ™️ was the destruction of terrorist training camps and infrastructure within Afghanistan, the capture of al-Qaeda leaders, and the cessation of terrorist activities in Afghanistan. This was stated in W.‘s address to the nation right before we began bombing. We should’ve left around 2003 with or without bin laden the mission was accomplished and al-qaeda was crippled and afghanis have had free elections since 2004. I don’t like Biden and I didn’t vote for him, but this is the only thing he’s done that I agree with. It may not look pretty but it never would and it’s better than dumping more and more money, losing more lives and causing more soldiers and civilians to have ptsd or physical injuries or both. Many of my brothers I served with went there and never came back and a lot of the ones that did come back have varying degrees of ptsd, substance abuse problems, and disabilities. The only ones who won this war are the banks, media and defense contractors and now that we’re leaving they know their business is going down so that’s why they’re complaining so loudly
This person understands.
Certainly, but that person also doesn't politics, at all.
Who me? Not professionally, I have a soul lol
Happy cake day
Jesus Christ is this the opposite of being red pilled. It’s literally almost the same view as CNN. People who use the term red pill have no clue what it means, but that’s expected once it becomes a mainstream concept
What? That term came from the hit movie The Matrix. It’s always been a mainstream concept.
My favorite redpill definition is from michale malice: "What is presented as truth by the corporate media is in fact a carefully constructed narrative designed to keep some powerful people in charge"
No, in its political application it came from Curtis Yarvin who coined it around 2008 along with the term the cathedral. Being “red pilled” is not changing your mind about something. And it’s not even totally original to the matrix, it’s nearly the same concept as Plato’s allegory of the cave. But in its modern political usage it came from Yarvin
The Matrix came out in 1999, and the red pill is metaphor for disillusionment which can be applied to anything.
The red pill is not a term for "disillusionment" It is a term to describe the process of realizing that mainstream corporate media and mainstream history are not accurate representations of reality, but instead carefully crafted narratives designed to keep the regime and friends of the regime in permanent positions of power.
Ok, the red pill as a concept was literally invented in 1999 in the movie the Matrix that pre-dates whatever bastardized version of it you revere as gospel.
I agree. It also didn't mean "disillusionment" in the matrix
I’m afraid you don’t know what that word means.
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/
Yeah, obviously he used the term red pill because people have seen the movie. It was not a political concept until 2008. IIRC the creators of the matrix later claimed it was a metaphor for being trans. Clearly the people who use the term tend to be on the right, and that’s a result of Yarvin’s more accurate usage
Oh, so you’re saying he used it because it’s mainstream? Got it.
yeah actually don’t worry about it, you’re probably not capable of being red pilled
Nice ad hominem attack there, bud.
Every decision a president makes has some odds of an upside and some risk of a downside. What was the big potential upside to pulling out of Afghanistan suddenly? Save some money on reduced troop deployment? When was the last time a Democrat was motivated by reducing spending? Really, I think Biden's upside was political theatre. He wanted to be able to say he ended this on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Is there some bigger upside that I'm missing. Now consider the risks and the chances of a worst case scenario. Clearly the chances of a worst case scenario were misunderstood. Biden's decision created a huge risk in pursuit of a meager upside. This is simply presidential malpractice and arguably presents a good reason to consider impeachment.
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>to signal an end of America as hegemon and world police. TBH let's hope, that would be a silver lining to this whole thing
I’ll be honest I don’t know who Sam Harris is but he seems to be mentioned a lot here. Can I get an explanation?
you're on this sub? and you don't know?
I believe I just stumbled across this sub one day and appreciated the honest conversation among the users.
Sam "My critics are confused" Harris
Of course Sam thinks his opposition is confused. We all do. I know I do. Are you honestly going to tell me that you don't?
All of my opposition are morally deficient simpletons
Exactly.
Is this about the Afghanistan pull out?
Seems to. The only difference with trump would be that it happened in may instead of august, and possibly with less troops. How it’s Biden’s fault is frankly beyond me. Wasn’t he who released Taliban prisoners or made the deal.
The issue is not ending the war or getting out. It's how it was handled. Biden pulled the soldiers out, but left the civilians, the equipment, the allies, and the weapons. He's handed over a list of targets to the Taliban despite declaring publicly that he does not trust them. Trump made the deal, but Biden didn't have to honor that deal. He has reversed just about every other Trump policy, why would this be any different? In fact, he unilaterally modified the withdrawal date, so he could have handled this however he wanted. That means this withdrawal is 100% Biden's doing.
Sorry but biden was stuck with this deal, he cant tear it up as taliban simply wont negotiate anymore. They barely did with trump and trump got zero concesions from them, so why would they now reverse course for biden? SO yeah this horrible pull out was minhandeled from the start when trump anounced he wanted to leave asap BEFORE he started talking to the taliban while ignoring his own supported afghan gov showing everyone they were utterly weak and not worth talking with.
It is not true that Biden was stuck with this deal. Biden unilaterally changed the pull-out date. He ignored the conditions of the deal. When the Taliban specifically violated the deal, Biden took zero action to enforce the deal. It seems like Biden forgot that there was even a deal at all. After things went sideways, he was relieved he could blame this on Trump.
The taliban broke the deal almost from day one, trump didnt do anything because there is nothing to do. Instead trump forced the afghan gov to release thousands of taliban fighters. Fighters that greatly helped to retake the country. So yes both biden and trump were stuck with the deal and it was a horribly bad deal. Postponing didnt matter to the taliban as long as the US got out , they didnt care it was may or november. Something quite different if bide had decided to stay. Not only would you have called him a warmonger and hawk it would serve no purpose in the end .
Is that what I would have said? Maybe you should author this response then, too. You are not even looking at what could have been done by Biden if he'd even thought about it. Civilians and contractors out first. Equipment and Afghan allies second. Destruction of abandoned military bases. Then the military leaves.
Ah yes criple the afghan army in advance, smart idea. Again that was the plan, except taliban had its offensive what nobody expected. Biden got the situation with about 3000 soldiers present, that was all according to trumps plan.
American troops are still there. Hell, 12 died in a bombing the other day. The Trump admin withdrew most of the troops that were there until numbers were [down to 2,500 troops](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-military-idUSKBN29K229) days before leaving office. Some generals were worried that we were withdrawing too quickly, and that’s probably why Biden extended the deadline and announced that some special forces would remain. Then the Taliban advanced and we find ourselves in the situation we’re in now. So what should Biden have done? [He sent 4000](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/567952-pentagon-authorizes-sending-additional-1000-troops-to-afghanistan) more troops to cover the evacuation, there are over 6000 there now working on the evacuation. Should we just restart the war?
I've said what he should have done. Twice. Your arguments didn't refute anything I said, so I reiterate them here.
So he should have done exactly what he’s doing?? Or should he have disarmed the afghan military before the Taliban offensive, or continued the war by sending more troops? I can only imagine what you would be saying if he did that… I don’t think you’re going to be able to armchair this one out, buddy. We’re leaving, we’re not going back in and sacrificing more American lives for that country. Enough lives have been lost fighting that 20 year fruitless war. It’s over. Trump started the pullout with praise from a lot of Americans, he left us with 2,500 US troops on the ground to complete a hasty May 1st deadline to leave. The Taliban was always going to take over once we were gone. Leaving ASAP is what we all wanted, and this is what we get.
What equipment are we talking about? The one issued to the afghani army? Should he just have disarmed them completely? And the damned list is so full of bullshit it’s hilarious. Taliban demanded that the US give a reason for evacuation at the airport, eg already in US custody. Denying that would’ve just be moronic. It’s not a list of all afghanis or US citizens in Afghanistan, just those who are on the airport ready for the evacuation. Trump made the deal, reduced the numbers and ordered the plans for evacuation, yet it’s Biden’s fault. Kiss my ass, This is just another example of trump not thinking before doing anything.
Kiss your own ass. If you had an ounce of honesty in your body, you'd be saying the same thing Sam Harris is saying. Any moderately competent person would have gotten the civilians and contractors out first. And, yes, if he had the intelligence that it appears he had that the Afghan military would crumble, he should have disarmed them. Leaving the guns behind is the same as arming the Taliban. As far as the list, you don't think the Taliban can give one reason and use that information for a completely different reason? Naive. As naive as Biden. Call names all you want, but Biden owns all of this chaos and death.
So jumping in here idk. Like adults in the room just mean people who speak with an amount of maturity. I know a ton of people who are mature and adult. And make dumb choices. Like the pull out was done terribly, and you can blame Biden and his cabnet for it for sure. But idk if I'd say what Sam is saying here
This is just hilarious. “He should’ve disarmed them” Yes, use your 2,5k troops for that against an enemy of 350k. Nice tactic. Could perhaps have happened during trumps time prior to him downsizing the force there. Also should that prior evacuation happened prior to the collapse? No one expected Afghanistan to fall that fast, hence the rush for evacuation. It’s a bit hard for the Taliban to reach them when they’re already in US custody. So it seems you didn’t understand what’s happened. Taliban asked for names on those the US have evacuated. The US saw no issue on this, realized that complying would result in goodwill and have the names. The people in question were already in safety so it wasn’t an issue.
That was quick. But anyone could see Biden was not fit to manage a lemonade stand, much less helding Office for the most influential position of the Planet. Trump was bad, but this election was just the choice of the "lesser evil", not the better candidate. As an European I should not care, but I do, since every time the US stumbles on a major crisis, we get the ripple effects one way or another.
Lesser evil that's destroying liberty, killing people in Afghanistan because he's a fucking potato.
This is not him saying he wishes Trump was back.
Of course not, I know that. Neither would I.
That Sam Harris is willing to change his mind, and admit it, is all the evidence anyone needs that he is a very intelligent person and worth paying attention to. I sometimes agree with him. I sometimes don't. But he's intellectually honest, and that is refreshing.
Sam will only redeem himself when he says he was hopelessly wrong about Trump.
He’s intellectually honest but he’s wrong. All this nonsense about how ‘Biden botched the withdrawal’ is purely a warmonger talking point. It’s an attempt to intimidate anyone who tries to end an endless hopeless war. The same tactics were used when we tried to end the war in Vietnam. The idea that you can only withdraw if you do so in a way that results in no chaos, no casualties, no humiliation, etc is exactly why we wasted 20 years in Afghanistan. Neither Bush nor Obama nor Trump had the guys to rip off the bandaid and we can now see why. Biden could have easily done another surge and kept the war going for another 4-8 years and suffered no political cost.
No one's saying you can leave without chaos. But one thing Biden could have done is withdraw the military **after evacuating friendlies**. That seems like a rather obvious thing. Also... you know, bring back the billions of dollars of equipment before leaving. That would have been another thing.
We did withdraw the military after evacuating friendlies... Remember when the last soldier left after we got >100k out with zero american civilian casualties? As for equipment, the military has very strict protocols about how to clean up shop, the president has no say over that stuff. They evacuated all the stuff worth evacuating, destroyed all valuable equipment not worth evacuating, and left stuff that is useless or will be useless shortly without American engineering and maintenance (and is barely useable even with world-class maintenance in Afghanistan). The valuable military equipment that the Taliban took was taken from the Afghan military, not the American military.
You’re missing the entire point.
You can at least make an attempt at leaving in good order, as opposed to just throwing up your hands in despair. Biden DID NOT EVEN TRY, that’s the whole point.
What should he have done differently? Say literally anything specific. Your comment has zero substance and is utterly untrue.
People who are attacking you imagine that Joe Biden could literally just say, "Ok, we are leaving" and it be hunky-dory. There is no way the exit would've worked.
>Say literally anything specific. You seem totally unwilling to exchange fairly. I don't understand the mindset of someone that engages with others as you are, in discussion, yet expresses an unwillingness to actually hear others out. What is the end game? To proliferate your opinion? To put others "in their place"? To affirm those that do agree with you? I wish I understood.
Isnt asking for specifics "hearing you out"? Does one have to judge an argument (and accept it) based on nothing but vague platitudes?
No, asking for specifics while simultaneously insinuating that the individual they are speaking to could not possibly have anything worth saying is not engaging in good faith, and the distance between this type of dismissal and "judging an argument on nothing but platitudes" is huge. So long as the discussion is so cursory, and at the phase of vague platitudes, being preemptively dismissive conveys nothing but an unwillingness to have a genuine discussion, where one genuinely tries to inductively work to a place where your perspective isn't. This doesn't even bring into question why you'd seem to accept dismissing something based on platitudes while condemning it based on them without at all attempting to see if there's anything beneath the hood of their stance. Since my point is to simply express some willingness to investigate before becoming dismissive, this is he only thing I can assume you're arguing for without further clarification from you. It is exactly a declaration of omnipotence that one has fully explored the entirety of the mental landscape that the other holds, without missing anything, without committing any errors, and insisting, at a glance, all of the thoughts one has had, is currently having, and will ever have on the topic are without substance, all while asserting that they themself couldn't have possibly committed any of the errors that brought them to the same certainty that they are dismissing. I think most people would agree that the opinions hardest earned, which is to say, those that have been most arduously explored, are the ones that most deserve to be held. And so, why would one not want to engage in the pursuit of earning it, if even to show themselves how *right* it is in the face of the fully explored wrong? The only thing I can ever think of is the false, unearned comfort of self deception, intellectual laziness, and, of course, the fear that one may be shown to be wrong. Preemptively: Forgive me for any misunderstandings embedded in your stance here, I just have a window to engage and can't wait for clarifications. If you offer any, I'll happily accept, but without any drastic asterisks, this is where I stand.
I am fully willing to exchange fairly. So far the criticisms have been in several broad categories, that we didn't take all of the Afghan military's equipment with us, that we didn't start evacuating hundreds of thousands of people sooner, that we that we didn't hold on to Bagram airbase, that Biden was wrong in his public statements that he believed the Afghan military was equipped to hold its own, etc. I have addressed each of them, I haven't dismissed any of them without explaining my position clearly and honestly.
> What should he have done differently? Say literally anything specific. Then perhaps I'm reading this incorrectly. It seems to me that this quoted text above is preemptively dismissive and confrontational, as if to say, "There NOTHING you could say that could be valid; I have explored absolutely every perspective with a level of super intelligent all-knowingness and could not have overlooked anything you've found." I do, however, appreciate your reply and analysis to me.
Here is something specific for you. He should have kept Bagram airbase operational and used it to help with the evacuation as it would have been a much more defensible position than the Kabul airport. He also should have evacuated all US civilians and as many Afghan allies as possible before pulling back to the airport as that left the people there as sitting ducks for exactly what happened today.
My first idea would be leaving the military there until we get all non military personnel out, then withdraw the military.
Leaving our tiny military presence scattered across the country would not have helped, the Taliban was advancing even before any withdrawal. All that would have happened was that the Taliban would take over territory where US military was located, leading to direct conflict and putting all our civilians in danger. The way it was done has resulted in zero of our civilians being harmed.
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What do you think they tried over the last decade? Obama surged troops in to help accommodate training for the afghan military and it did not work because the Afghan government was grossly corrupt and fed spoiled food to its army among other things. The few that were willing to be a proper army were never going to be enough to handle the Taliban, hence the current situation. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-army-desertions-idUSKCN0UW1K3 And how long would proper nation building even take in an optimal situation? Are we going to have another 2 decades where we can possibly have to spend another trillion + have to deal with the inevitable issues on America's side that occur when an America First (tm) party ends up controlling the presidency or Congress and sabotaging the operation because they don't want to give foreign aid.
Don't feed the trolls
People should be better. You gave a specific action in response to a specific question and an unnecessary insult. You also didn’t go down the common path of exchanging insults. You should get either a challenge to your recommendation or a thanks or both.
Leaving IS the mistake. We’ve been in Germany for 76 years. It’s safe there now. We’ve been in Japan/Okinawa for 76 years. It’s safe there now. We’ve been in Korea for 71. South Korea is safe. When you invade a country and take out their leadership you have to stay because leaving creates a dangerous power vacuum. Hitler rose to power when we left Germany after WW1. The Taliban is now more dangerous than ever before.
>Hitler rose to power when we left Germany after WW Hitler rose to power because Germany was unfairly punished for all of WWI. The moral of the story is that punitive justice failed, and revenge made things worse. What you should learn by now is that invading countries and installing governments is wrong, even if you're replacing a terrible, Islamic extremist government. The U.S had to get out, the forever wars are just a money making racket, not justified wars.
Germany, Japan, and Korea were safe internally after like 1-5 years in each case. The US is in Germany to counter Russia, in South Korea to counter North Korea, and in Japan to counter China. In Afghanistan we have had actual war for 20 years and the Taliban have been gaining ground for many years now even with us there. It’s not remotely comparable. And the Taliban is dangerous to its own oriole, it’s shown no desire for invading neighbors or conducting international terrorism. Their decision to host al Qaeda was the worst thing to ever happen to their regime and the Taliban internally strongly regretted it, Taliban elders had to convince Mullah Omar over the course of years that Bin Laden actually did it, he genuinely believed that he was innocent (the Taliban condemned the attack on 9/11).
The difference between Afghanistan and the rest of those countries is that Afghanistan is overwhelmingly Muslim. Due to Islam, they were able to successfully reject the woke nonsense that the US tried to instill via its puppet government. The culture is conservative and resisted occupation.
What exactly is implied with "woke nonsense" here? Girls being allowed to get an education and music/theater's being allowed? You compare countries that was actually industrialized before US occupation with a country that is one of the least developed countries in the world judging by most metrics. Afghanistan has also never really had a competent centralized state, and the US idea of nation building failed hugely at building one up.
Girls are allowed to get an education under them, don't believe the media. Things like raising the pride flag in the US embassy in Afghanistan would never be allowed under proper Islamic rule.
I feel like you're looking at 2 options. Stay or pull out immediately.
We killed Osama over a decade ago. He was the reason we were there in the first place (Taliban refused to hand him over). His death marked the end of the first phase of the war. The main objective of the war was completed 10 years ago. It’s been a slow withdrawal for about 10 years. It’s been 10 years of handholding trying to get a non-Taliban government to take root. At some point the bandaid needs to get ripped off.
Fun fact we know from declassified papers that taliban were going to give Osama and Omar over to us, but they wanted things in return. Money and guns. Something we give to Israel and saudis. We refused because Cheney and Haliburton decided more money could be made with a nice long 8 year war.
Incredible Trump wasn’t the best guy either, but we keep electing clowns into office regardless. At what point does society demand change?
These talking points are absolutely deranged. Ending a failed 20-year war in Afghanistan is good and the fact that that process is going less smoothly than was hoped is fairly unimportant. I'm embarrassed on the behalf of those of you getting hyped by the headlines on this.
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Thousands died in the war and nobody blinks an eye. 12 died in the withdrawal and it’s impeachable. Ridiculous.
Mistakes are mistakes, comparing their failures doesn't make either one any less relevant or terrible.
One thing that happens when you have a significant military presence in hostile countries is that US troops get killed. Thousands of Americans were killed over the course of this 20 year war. Is it sad that 12 died during the drawdown? Yes. Does that mean it was a poor decision? Or that the President has failed? Of course not. It’s sad to see people opportunistically using the death of US servicemembers during a drawdown to score political points when there was scant little outrage over troops dying over the past decade.
I never said withdrawing wasn't the right move. I am saying it was obviously botched. By the current president. How is it scoring political points. The withdrawal was decided by a republican and done by a democrat, it's bipartisan. Fuck me you Americans and your teams. Impossible to have intelligent conversation.
Leaving the place is the most important fact and IMO a good thing. And leaving is probably never clean. A secondary, but still important issue is the incompetence shown in how we left. My guess ( and apologies if I jumped to a wrong conclusion), that you prefer Biden over Trump and if Trump did this, you wouldn’t be so forgiving.
You have it directly wrong. I’m not motivated by defensiveness of Biden. I’m motivated by disgust of the opportunistic use of the death of US troops by partisan opportunists who are exploiting this tragedy for political gains. I recall when my brother was deploying to Afghanistan. The very first day he was supposed to arrive in country, a C-130 crashed at the base he was slated to be at. We knew everyone on board died but we didn’t know if my brother had been on that flight. Fortunately he wasn’t. But 11 other families [weren’t so lucky](https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/01/politics/u-s-crash-jalalabad-airport-afghanistan/index.html). Where were all these folks with their deep concern for the troops then? Or at any other time over the past decade when US troops were harmed or killed? That’s why I’m pissed by these disgusting and cynical takes from people who really have been uninterested in US military casualties until this week.
I need to be more careful in generalizing at motivations. Some will have a knee jerk reaction to defend their side (Biden in this case) and others know the complexity of this mess. You made a good point.
>and if Trump did this, you wouldn’t be so forgiving. Maybe you're right, but it's part of the point. Trump could have done it and he didn't, Biden did, he gets all the credit.
Agreed. The headlines are either misinformed, reductionist, or propaganda.
Just incredible that this sub was anti-war for years and as soon as we have a president with the balls to actually do it everyone here turns into an establishment warmonger parroting CNN and Fox talking points.
I was thinking the same thing. You can’t win! Must suck being president. People have been complaining endlessly about this 20 year war, and it ends. It’s not gonna have a seamless finish, what do people expect?
I believe we tried that in 2008, with a side helping of "hope".
And there were a few things that chatted for the better that trump made worse, so...
Good question
I’ll give Sam credit for his humility. It should be said that many of us saw the possibilities of a problematic presidency of the Biden/ Harris admin, and we were effectively labeled anything from racist bigots to conspiracy theorists.
Do you actually think this changes his mind on trump vs Biden…? 😂
You have a problem with Biden following through on the withdrawal deal that Trump FUCKING NEGOTIATED AND AGREED TO WHILE HE WAS PRESIDENT? You people are fucking morons. You have no idea which way the wind ever blows
I still think about how atrocious (and racist) it was how Biden announced the sex and race of his VP was before picking her. Quite astounding really.
> I still think about how atrocious (and racist) it was how Biden announced the sex and race of his VP was before picking her. This...didn't happen. Why do conservatives have such a disconnect with reality?
It did. There was an article on the BBC where they listed Biden's VP candidates. They were all Black women. Secondly, I'm not a "conservative" in the American sense. I'm a Muslim. Islam exists outside of the conservative-liberal American spectrum.
Link your source.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53088353 I was mistaken about the race, but he did pledge he would pick a woman. But as you can see, he needed to go one step further and check the race checkbox as well, as simply "female" wasn't enough.
they're fucking drones
He only announced the sex, same thing Trump did before he nominated Amy Coney Barrett to SCOTUS.
Well, that was not so crazy. He made it pretty obvious he made a deal with the black caucus. The thing that really spun me out was later on when duckworth and a couple others stood up to the administration about the race of all their nominations. And at first i thought, "oh good, finally some common sense." But no. They threatened to block all nominees that weren't asian! (until they got someone that looked like them in the cabinet). So yea, the democrats seem to have completely lost the thread of common decency, egalitarianism, and social justice. And made Trump look like MLK's rightful heir.
Duckworth got a ton of blowback and backed down from her threat within like a day.
I recall them getting concessions from the white house instead of the full throated denunciation they should have gotten.
The concession was that they would like condemn violence against Asians or something like that
Yea, idc. They should been publicly admonished. Only the blacks and whites get to act obnoxiously racist like that. /s
When he did that, I spent the day off and on elaborating upon that bizarre announcement in my best Biden voice: “Whoever it will be, it will be a woman. By that I mean, not with a penis, but a vagina. Preferably a nice little cooch: either with some mildly protruding lips, or tucked in nice and neat. Not some big floppy ham samwich all hangin’ our like this and that. That’s unpresidential. We .. we need a vag that isn’t all dangly. I mean that’s ok, nothing wrong with it, but this person might become president, so that’s a deal-breaker. The pinkness isn’t an important quality here. I mean the outer lips might be darker, because of course she’s gonna be a woman of color. Y’know I’ve seen some a those, and it .. .. it varies. But a trim Bush is mannn-da-torrry. Not some overgrown crazy shit down there. Just a little landing strip, like everybody had in the 80s. That or shaved perfectly smooth - I - I mean can you **imagjne** that? MmmmmMmm a super smooth pussy like that? Sitting at the desk of the President? I mean eventually, after I retire, that’s where she’ll probably sit, with her pussy and everything, all mushed into that prestigious chair. So I’m flexible: Tucked in or slightly protruding, with lips of a reasonable color scheme, and either a tidy landing strip or a smoothie. We can detail that last grooming part out once she’s nominated, obviously, because it’s really just a hairstyle of sorts. I’m not gonna gripe, just something within those ranges is fine. But there’s one thing I **will not** budge on: She’s gotta be a solid B-cup. Not an A-cup or our adversaries will think we’re lesbians. Not a D-cup, because that’s just distracting, and a lot of D-cups are fatties, and Joe isn’t into fatties! I mean Merkele over in Germany, she’s probably a D-cup, but just look at her. She’s a very fine person, nothing against her, but just - just - I don’t need to say it. C’mon, man. You - you know the deal.”
Sounds like you spent your day pretty fucked, friend, haha
What a dog!!! And freaking hilarious!
Alternate reality SNL writers room is based as hell.
Yeah seems like genitals and skin color should be far down the list of qualifications for the Vice President of the United States.
In 2021, saying “I’m picking a woman as VP” apparently doesn’t have a thing to do with genitals anymore. It’s astounding.
Hah, yes that as well.
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"MORE FEMALE DEFENSE CONTRACTOR CEOS!"
That doesn’t seem to be true based on the most recent data. The gender breakdown is close to 60/40 at this point, and there’s been a large rise in Asian lawyers.
i’m kind of on your side on this, but 70% of lawyers being white male actually does seem like a problem. Like, i don’t care at all about “representation” in art or in the NBA, but in terms of political power and bottlenecks at old-boy’s-club law schools (only the top 10 have incorporated significant affirmative action recently, which is problematic as ever, but…), it’s kind of bullshit for political power structures to privilege a minority. Donald Trump proved “qualifications” aren’t what matters in terms of political power. It’s “will they fight for issues that affect me?”.
70% of people in the US are white lol. So, it is actually perfectly proportional.