Comments by "wily wascal" (@wilywascal2024) on "Don Lemon: GOP hypocrisy is off the charts and sickening" video.
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War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. ~ George Orwell
"Peace is not a very big thing to ask for, is it?" ~ Fatima Gailani, Afghan activist and negotiator, pleading for continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan
It is when asking the Taliban, who do not seek peace or to bargain in good faith, but total domination once again. U.S. has spent 20 years and over $2 trillion trying to achieve peace in Afghanistan, losing over 4000 American lives (military and civilian contractors), with tens of thousands of Americans wounded there.
"The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials … have given Afghans little reason to support their government," Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of U.S. forces in the country, wrote in a 2009 memorandum. "This crisis of confidence, coupled with a distinct lack of economic and educational opportunity, has created fertile ground for the insurgency."
That was 11 years ago, and little has changed since. Thought the invasion of Afghanistan by Bush was a mistake that would lead to a quagmire, and have been proven correct. Still, initially supported efforts to bring peace and stability there, along with basic human and civil-rights, because after invading felt we had an obligation to rebuild. However, while U.S. blunders there have contributed to a failure, Afghans are their own worst enemy, and no one can help them until enough of them are willing to help themselves.
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Welcome to war. This is what war is. It's terrible, it's tragic, it's ugly, it stinks, it's unfair, it's sad, it's wasteful, it's hell, innocents die, and things always go wrong. You think we'd have learned that by now, but no, it's a lesson that has to be repeatedly learned, evidently. The consensus is that nobody foresaw the Afghan government and its armed forces completely capitulating so quickly as they did. Some say there should have been a contingency plan for this, but even though hindsight is 20/20, have yet to hear any rational plan that could have dealt with this situation. Shit happens, and Biden got handed a turd with Afghanistan. Instead of allowing the crap to continue, Biden made the hard, responsible decision to pull the U.S. out of another country's civil war. Fallout was inevitable, and Republicans trying to capitalize on that politically or media trying to profit from it is truly degenerate.
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There has never been a graceful exit for the losing side in any war.
Truth is, our hasty withdrawal from Vietnam was even worse if you look at the numbers and the whole picture. Only 7,000 were evacuated from Vietnam during the fall of Saigon, with many more left behind, including two dead American soldiers----the last to die in the Vietnam War----left behind in a hospital and not returned until a year later by the Vietnamese. That evacuation occurred under hostile NVA and Vietcong fire. Since August 14, over 120,000 have already been evacuated from Afghanistan despite the complete capitulation of the Afghan government and Afghan Army, with no hostile fire upon American troops by the Taliban so far. Over 125,000 have been evacuated since the end of July. Moreover, the January 27, 1973 peace agreement signed by the Americans with the North Vietnamese ended all direct U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, and provided sixty days for troop removal. Just as with Afghanistan, all troops were removed. However, it was over two years later, on April 30, 1975, when the fall of Saigon occurred. So, the U.S. had nearly two-and-a-half years to evacuate everyone else before the fall of the South Vietnamese government and armed forces, instead of just the two weeks like in Afghanistan so far.
The other thing in stark contrast between Vietnam and Afghanistan is that no Democrats----including Carter, who was running against Ford for President----tried to use the situation for political gain like Republicans are so desperately and depravedly doing now. That, despite the fact that it was the previous Trump administration which bears the brunt of the blame for the current situation.
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Trump excluded the Afghan government from his surrender negotiations with the Taliban, legitimizing the Taliban by making a separate peace deal with them and delegitimizing the government we worked so long and hard at so much cost to build and support, while releasing 5,000 Taliban prisoners which included the worst of the worst and allowed them to return to fight against Afghan and U.S. forces, while agreeing to withdraw all U.S. forces by May 1, 2021, guaranteeing failure. Previously, in 2018, Trump had Pakistan release the current leader of the Taliban, who had been their top military leader. Moreover, Trump eviscerated the refugee program for Afghan and Iraqi allies visa programs, creating a huge backlog over four years. A federal judge even ruled Trump's delaying of those visas illegal. Furthermore, Trump abandoned are Kurdish allies in Syria and Iraq. Trump and Pompeo could hardly have screwed up our foreign policy any worse, and the damage they did will take decades to repair. But the Republican cult morons are too stupid to know and too stupid to care; they'll just deny and try to shift blame, as usual.
Liz Cheney's right----it didn't have to happen this way: her father, Dick Cheney, and George Bush were responsible for the deterioration of affairs in Afghanistan by diverting troops and resources to conduct an illegal invasion of Iraq on the false premise of WMD and Iraq harboring terrorists. The situation in Afghanistan never recovered from that fatal mistake by Cheney and Bush; it allowed the Taliban to regroup and come back bigger and stronger than ever. Cheney and Bush's illegal war in Iraq also resulted in the emergence of ISIS.
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