Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan Calls Out His Own Network u0026 Others Over Their Bull****" video.

Didn't Trump instigate the withdrawal? Biden only postponed it. This isn't said in praise of Trump. It's just worth remembering that Biden didn't start the withdrawal, and it's not altogether clear that he wouldn't've maintained the Obama era holding pattern.
15
@stickjohnny It doesn't appear to be. Not yet anyway. I wouldn't be overly optimistic about Biden's foreign policy. He was, after all, 100% for the invasion in the first place.
6
@serjarmen That is all, frankly, bullshit and after-the-fact excuse making of the usual sort where the US's crimes are written off as mistakes, miscalculations, and well-intentioned blunders. Biden fully supported invading Afghanistan, an act that was both immoral and illegal. No invasion of Afghanistan, no matter how closely it hewed to Biden's ideal, would've been justified.
6
Matthew Neddeau Sorry, you still haven't said how Congress voting for the invasion made it legally or morally sound. How is Biden's support for the invasion justified by the egregious errors committed by his peers? Maybe you can take the boot out of your mouth for two seconds to explain that.
4
Matthew Neddeau So what? That only means that nearly all members of the attacking government voted to authorize it. Notably, the UNSC did not. It wouldn't matter if 100% of congress voted to allow Bush to invade; it was still wrong and in violation of both international and domestic law. I can't believe you'd try to pass off the invasion's popularity as an excuse for Biden's support of it. Biden only disagreed with the surge because he didn't think it would aid America's goals in the country. He did not and never has had a fundamental opposition to waging war against a non-aggressor. If Biden thought the surge would've secured the US's puppet regime and destroyed the Taliban, he'd've been all for it. There is an important distinction here that Americans need to grasp.
3
@suetrublu Sanders voted against authorization for Iraq but in favor of it for Afghanistan. Iirc
3
NYT headline today: In 2001 when the Taliban were ready to surrender, the US passed on the deal. Some are now wondering: Could the war in Afghanistan have been avoided? I think this perfectly summarizes the ambit of liberal thought. "Some are now wondering" manages to erase what opposition there was to the war. Activists and legal scholars opposed the bombing and invasion on moral and legal grounds, all of which was dismissed or ignored by the press, who now get to act as if they discovered this lost opportunity glimmering beneath the rubble we created. Asking if the war could've been avoided is like asking if a crime could be avoided. It wasn't a necessary or inevitable act. Of course the war could've been avoided, but that would've required the Bush administration and its NATO accomplices to follow international law and seek diplomatic solutions.
2
Lol
1
@stickjohnny From the Guardian in April: "The administration says it will keep sufficient forces in the region to react if al-Qaida or other terrorist groups re-establish training camps inside Afghanistan, but the dispersal of the terrorist threat meant it no longer made sense to keep a permanent force in the country."
1