The Anniversary of 9/11 is tomorrow...
It’s good to learn to be satisfied with what you’ve got.
I haven’t got much….but I got enough.
People in places which are suffering tend to adjust well to not having much…..even though they might be irritated by this state of affairs. They find a way, usually, to live a good life, despite what they don’t have.
naturalplastic wrote:
In the Nineties Ben Ladin planned to get the US into a military quagmire....in a Muslim country. He was thinking maybe in...Somalia, Yemen, or maybe in Afghanistan.
Ben Laden got his wish.
He also got killed.
Nine eleven unified the US. Like Pearl Harbor. But in only a couple of years we went from Pearl Harbor to Vietnam- from the unity of the second world war to the polarization and division of the Vietnam era.
W. Bush had to invade Afghanistan, but he did not have to invade Iraq.
So you can condemn W for the later, but not for the former.
And therein lies the rub. The whole 20 year US involvment is bracketed by two Presidential "decisions" that, let face it, were NOT decisions but actions that no POTUS would have had the choice to do differently: Bushs invasion, and Biden withrawal.
Bush had no choice but to respond to 9-11 but to counter attack.
And its hard to imagine how any POTUS could have withdrawn twenty years later by not creating a disaster.
John Bolton said that we should stay in Afghanistan for (essentially) forever in an open ended commitment (I suppose he means like our presence in South Korea and in Germany) as "an insurance policy against terrorism". Not sayin I agree, but its a logical opinion.
So its either stay forever, or pull out.
Biden knew that part of why many voters were driven to vote for fringe candidates like Sanders and Trump is because of war weariness. So Bolton's option is not ...an option. So he chose to end it.
If thats the choice then it hard to imagine a POTUS withdrawing with significantly less disgrace. You could imagine a POTUS using a long secret timetable, and placing Americans and Afghans with American connections near the capital city and near the airport for easy evacuation. But that would have tipped off everyone that the US was planning to abandon the country and sell it down the river. That would have demoralized our Afghan allies and emboldened the Taliban to attack. And the house of cards would have still have collapsed just as fast. So there would have been little difference.
So the whole 20 years was like a Greek Tragedy. Fate that the US couldnt escape- starting with an unavoidable invasion, and ending with an unavoidably disasterous withdrawal.
So what have we learned Dorothy...from all of this?
Beats me.
Ben Laden got his wish.
He also got killed.
Nine eleven unified the US. Like Pearl Harbor. But in only a couple of years we went from Pearl Harbor to Vietnam- from the unity of the second world war to the polarization and division of the Vietnam era.
W. Bush had to invade Afghanistan, but he did not have to invade Iraq.
So you can condemn W for the later, but not for the former.
And therein lies the rub. The whole 20 year US involvment is bracketed by two Presidential "decisions" that, let face it, were NOT decisions but actions that no POTUS would have had the choice to do differently: Bushs invasion, and Biden withrawal.
Bush had no choice but to respond to 9-11 but to counter attack.
And its hard to imagine how any POTUS could have withdrawn twenty years later by not creating a disaster.
John Bolton said that we should stay in Afghanistan for (essentially) forever in an open ended commitment (I suppose he means like our presence in South Korea and in Germany) as "an insurance policy against terrorism". Not sayin I agree, but its a logical opinion.
So its either stay forever, or pull out.
Biden knew that part of why many voters were driven to vote for fringe candidates like Sanders and Trump is because of war weariness. So Bolton's option is not ...an option. So he chose to end it.
If thats the choice then it hard to imagine a POTUS withdrawing with significantly less disgrace. You could imagine a POTUS using a long secret timetable, and placing Americans and Afghans with American connections near the capital city and near the airport for easy evacuation. But that would have tipped off everyone that the US was planning to abandon the country and sell it down the river. That would have demoralized our Afghan allies and emboldened the Taliban to attack. And the house of cards would have still have collapsed just as fast. So there would have been little difference.
So the whole 20 years was like a Greek Tragedy. Fate that the US couldnt escape- starting with an unavoidable invasion, and ending with an unavoidably disasterous withdrawal.
So what have we learned Dorothy...from all of this?
Beats me.
Try harder.
naturalplastic wrote:
King0fSpades wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
So what have learned Dorothy...from all of this?
Beats me.
I think the only thing we've learned at all from this is that China and Russia are right when they say that America is in a decline.
America certainly has its limits .
The old order is no longer working- international cooperation lead by the US to support Democratic values- by plugging every leak in the world dike-it aint working.
Trump screwed over the Kurds. And in doing that - mortally wounded America's credibility as an ally.
Agreed, and Biden dealt the death blow.
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