What? Pretty sure Afghanistan was lost too?? Or are we using strategic ambiguity in new ways?
The way I interpret this is single-handedly lost the war. Afghanistan was over 4 presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden). The sloppy withdrawal by Biden was die to no planning and a treaty signed by Trump to do so by 2/29/2020.
Trump is the one who unconditionally surrendered Afghanistan. It’s on him.
But still, not winning against Stone Age goat herders for 4 presidents… I don’t know man, what was the plan? Bomb the desert again?
If that’s the case, then Nixon didn’t single handily lose the Vietnam War either.
But let’s be real. The Democrat president who inherits this war in 2028 will be the one blamed for loosing it.
The sloppy withdrawal by Biden was a treaty signed by Trump to do so by 2/29/2020.
The war was won, the person you handed the reigns to just ran away so fast when the enemy came it appeared like it was you being run out of the country.
No one’s done that since Nixon? Would you call Afghanistan a victory? Although that was also Trump.
It’s not that he lost… it’s not that he started it because putin told him to… it’s not even that his moron running the “war department” is an alcohol addled butt sucking asshole…
It’s because of all the goddam taxpayer money he threw DOWN THE FUCKING COMMODE on the death merchants. What? Did Raytheon need to clear out some old inventory?
Putin didn’t get him to start, it was Bibi.
Hows our “Project for a new American century” coming along? Seems it wasnt as easy as just writing down all the things we lusted after and grabbing them via pure hubris.
7 wars and a movie… just missing the movie.
I’m sure they’ll make a movie about how the war made them sad
yes, inevitably casting “principled” god-fearing maga people as the real victims in all of this, who are always calm and dignified, and never ever wanted any violence, but the outcome was forced on them… by muslim and woke democrat terrorists who were the real epstein pedophiles all along. We can have an AI write this movie in about 5 minutes. I bet Noah Wiley would agree to play Hegseth.
Maybe they needed the ratings for the final war/season to be higher for the movie.
um what? america has only won 2 wars against a guerrilla force of their own terf in the last 100 years.
Did AI write this article? It repeats itself a lot.
Daily Kos still exists?
Yeah, they’re still sending out a newsletter and doing decent articles on their webpage but they’re low on fundraising.
The number of trackers this site wants you to accept and load is insane. I know it’s not that unusual these days, but fuck that, i’m not putting up with your clearly malicious interpretation of legitimate interest to see one article.
I wonder how much better would he fare had he assisted the protester, in time, like he promised, instead of letting them get massacred only to start his own thing a few months later.
I’m going to disagree with just one thing: the regime hasn’t really changed. But it isn’t and never was US&A’s fucking business. Change your own first ;)
I think this article forgets how Trump effectively surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban the last time around.
Also, calling Iraq a win is really stretching things.
Unless you consider how beneficial these wars were for the Israel first politicians and lobbies
Also Afghanistan. Also Vietnam.
The headline said “since Nixon.” The US lost the Vietnam war while Tricky Dick was president.
Winning a battle is easy, winning an occupation is close to impossible.
Mission Accomplished, babyyyyyyyy!!!
Most people seem to have decided that one is on Biden for some reason, including Biden.
eh. might be 55% Biden 45% Trump, 50/50? 60/40? but really it hardly matters. These last two presidents had the legitimate authority and tools to see the right thing done regardless of zionist funding pressure and they both decided to actively do war crimes and take the bribes instead of doing whats right. Neither is worthy of any leadership position, and they should both be in prison in orange jumpsuits for crimes against humanity. This is what weak and unprincipled leaders get us. These two incompetent arrogant idiots may be the end of all of us.
Which is really weird considering wasn’t he literally following the timeline Trump set out? A timeline that was almost certainly concocted to screw over the Democrat if Trump lost and that Trump wouldn’t have actually stuck to if he won?
Trump wouldn’t have actually stuck to if he won?
Funny how you say that…
It is on Biden, he didn’t have to stick to Trump’s controversial deal with the Taliban, he could have had a spine and given a statement about how he supports bringing the troops home but that leaving Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban will only put them at more risk in the future and how Trump made a fool of us by dealing with them. But no, every liberal has to treat Biden like he has no agency, like he didn’t continue negotiating with the Taliban and eventually gave the final withdrawl orders leaving locals who helped the US to fend for themselves.
This thread is full of the most absolutely bizarre takes imaginable.
The war in Afghanistan was a complete failure from start to finish and was only ever about making more money for arms manufacturers and oil companies. At literally any point in the decades long occupation, the best thing to do would be to immediately withdraw. The decision to withdraw was one of the best policy decisions any president has made in my lifetime (an admittedly low bar). I was hoping and praying for that decision for literally 20 years of my life. Personally, I’d tend to credit Biden with it since he was the one who actually followed through and accepted the political fallout from all the psychopathic hawks in the media.
And I come in here and the two sides are, “Biden good because [incredibly good and necessary decision] was actually Trump’s fault!” vs “Biden bad because [incredibly good and necessary decision] was Biden’s fault!”
How on earth has everyone in here come to this conclusion that if we prolonged the war even another 20 years, we could accomplish something we completely and utterly failed to do in that time? Even our own puppet government was telling us to leave. If you want to blame someone for losing the war, blame Bush, because the war was already lost within the first year at most. I literally cannot comprehend how anyone could look at that situation and want us to stay unless they were directly profiting from it.
Rationally, I know that liberals are bloodthirsty warmongerers who worship Khorne and want to build mountains of skulls and all, but like aren’t you supposed to keep up some kind of pretence of not just wanting to turn a country into a perpetual slaughterhouse?
liberals are bloodthirsty warmongerers who worship Khorne
Excuse me? It’s spelled “Koɿ n”.
It was a no-win situation. If he stayed, the Republicans who pretended to care about war being a bad thing would have raked him over the coals about throwing out future FIFA peace prize recipient Donald Trump’s flawless exit strategy.
And we see that when he went through with it anyway what a fucking mess it was, and they blamed him for it imploding anyway.
I’m of the firm opinion that we could have occupied Afghanistan for a century and the result upon exiting would have resulted in the exact same outcome. There were perhaps better ways to do a drawdown that wouldn’t result in leaving billions of dollars worth of military hardware, vehicles and munitions behind for the Taliban to sieze and use for themselves, but it still eventually had to happen and we got what we got.
Democracy can’t be given to someone else. It must be hard fought for and won by the people themselves, or it’s value will never become apparent to them.
I agree, and think you summarized it well. There was no win, and somehow Biden chose the worst way possible, leave the Taliban with billions of military equipment and abandoning everyone who helped the US, despite NOT sticking to Trump’s original timeline so be couldn’t even use that excuse.
He was under massive pressure to pull out because everyone was tired of this costly losing occupation, and he fucked up the pullout. That’s on him.
But no, every liberal has to treat Biden like he has no agency, like he didn’t continue negotiating with the Taliban and eventually gave the final withdrawl orders leaving locals who helped the US to fend for themselves.
So I didn’t go into everything in my comment because I was specifically only commenting on that one aspect. But I’m actually mad at Biden because I know he had agency in the process and didn’t have to hang all those interpreters out to dry, or leave a ton of fully functional hardware for the Taliban to use. I’m not trying to excuse Biden for his actions, I’m saying it’s weird that he chose to step on the landmine that Trump left for him rather than do anything to make leaving not a disaster and then just chose to eat the criticism after.
Like I’m glad that he did actually leave rather than staying and occupying Afghanistan forever. But I agree with what was said in that other comment that basically it was a no-win situation and Biden chose the worst possible way he could have left.
he didn’t have to stick to Trump’s controversial deal with the Taliban
Trump had already given away anything that would given Biden bargaining power. It was a deliberate setup.
Trump set it up to look that way.
Don’t mention any decency from Biden. It’ll ruin the narrative.
Don’t mention any decency from Biden. It’ll ruin the narrative.
You could just as easily say, “Don’t mention any decency from Hitler. It’ll ruin the narrative.”
Theres a reason people aren’t aware of a lot of the actually good things Hitler did. If you can figure out why those things arent mentioned these days, you will understand why people dont dwell on the good things Biden did.
Here is the stuff I’m talking about:
- Championed animal welfare causes.
- An anti-smoking crusader.
- An early champion of many environmental causes.
- A notable champion of the wisdom of infrastructure spending and infrastructure bills in general, just like Biden.
- An avid fan of the arts.
I will spot you a hint though: Biden/Hitler/ Trump all share a common problem, its one word, starts w a “G” and ends in “cide”.
He’s never been anything but a silver spoon total loser. He’s not even a skilled criminal. Fucking bush league in every measure.
He expected to lose the first election. He wanted to be able to use it as proof that the system was against him, to fire up the Fox News rubes and jumpstart his new TV network. He basically wanted to lose, and instead he won.
It’s amazing. He’s such a failure he failed at failing.
Donald Trump has spent his entire life falling up stairs.
This is a very dark replay of the plot of The Producers.
The BIGGEST Loser!!!
nobody loses as good as me, I’m not saying but everyone else is saying it. the best loser, the BIGGLIEST loser. Arnold Palmer, now he was a great loser, you know they say he had a really big penis, I never saw it myself it’s what people tell me, tremendous dong and tremendous loser.
thank you for your attention to this matter.
That’s an insult to Bushes and shrubbery.
Nah, even the bushes were better at this than him
Nixon had the decency to resign, Trump will drive us all 6ft under without any hesitation.
Nixon was not decent. The difference was that a Senator (Goldwater) told Nixon point blank that he was getting impeached and the senate had the votes to convict and remove.
Like most government officials “retirement” is getting fired.
I’m pretty sure Trump would give the order to launch the nukes and kill us all in that situation.
That’s why he’s firing the top military people. They won’t follow illegal (and reprehensible) orders, so he knows they won’t bomb blue states.
absurd claim even as a die-hard cynic.
He won’t nuke his top money makers, California and NY pay for half of the US military already
Trump 100% does not think that way.
Man bankrupted casinos, he has failed upwards most of his life and I don’t doubt he’d try some shit on CA and NY if he thought he could get away with it. It’s not their economies stopping him, its knowledge he might have to face consrquences if he did something too excessive, and as his brain liquifies I find myself wondering how long before he thinks the odds are okay.
It doesn’t matter how Trump thinks, the US military isn’t going to nuke their own families, don’t be ridiculous
I have to hope the people with access would refuse to obey these illegal orders.
By that point, if Americans STILL think they can vote and avoid violence then the American public really us beyond hope.
They also didn’t have Faux “News”, hate radio, or the Internet back then, either.
What’s so fucked up is that POS of a FCC chairman just celebrated making it even worse than it already was for truth.
Fox was started precisely because the moneybags never wanted a Republican president held to account again.
I genuinely think he’s by far the most likely president in this country’s history to launch ICBMs if he knows he is fucked. Which was a conclusion myself and any non-moron also came to in 2015.
He is really old now. A good cold, covid, a peanut or even a strong fart could do him in.
a) This headline forgets W losing Afghanistan
b) Fuck Nixon, but Eisenhower deserves the blame for Vietnam (admittedly one of the reasons he did that was because he thought it would give him political cover to shut McCarthyism down, but still)
Also Trump losing Afghanistan
Nixon continuing horrible foreign policy doesn’t absolve him. Also he conspired with Hanoi to sabotage LBJ which is straight up treason and extended the war another five years
he conspired with Hanoi to sabotage LBJ
Oh, c’mon. Next you’ll be telling me Reagan conspired with Iran to sabotage Carter!
admittedly one of the reasons he did that was because he thought it would give him political cover to shut McCarthyism down
I want to learn more about that. Got a recommendation?
Eisenhower deserves the blame for Vietnam
Eisenhower sent a small number of “advisors.” JFK sent more. The big escalation happened under Johnson, who was furious at how the Pentagon outmaneuvered him.
In Afghanistan, Trump unconditionally surrendered to the Taliban, but left Biden to complete the withdrawal. Before that, Iraq was either a loss or a stalemate, depending on what the poorly articulated objectives actually were.
The last time the US won was WW2.
The US “won” in WW2 because they managed to pick the winning team. There was a significant pro-nazi faction in the country at the time and it wasn’t really until Japan attacked Pear Harbour that they really picked a side and went all-in on it. Before that, they were fine with selling stuff to Nazi Germany, and Japan for that matter.
I never claimed otherwise.
The allies won WW2. The US alone would have lost.
If we make that distinction then we’re looking at Spanish American war as their last win.
Well… I guess they won the American Civil War.
Half of them lost it though, shall we call it a draw?
The wars were won in both cases. Decisively.
Hearts and minds were not won, in either case. There is a good question whether the nationbuilding could even theoretically have succeeded, given how tribal and divided the countries were. IMO it was stupid to try in the first place, especially in Afghanistan.
We keep entering conflicts with no clear objective because our leadership lies about our reasons for entering the conflict. In both cases we had no hard evidence they were even continuing development of nuclear weapons.
We defeated their military and occupied their countries, but winning implies completing an objective successfully. When we exited Afghanistan the Taliban instantly took control. They completed their objective, they won the war.
