Biden says he stands 'squarely behind' Afghanistan decision

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By ZEKE MILLER, JONATHAN LEMIRE and JOSH BOAK

WASHINGTON (AP) — Striking a defiant tone, President Joe Biden said Monday that he stands “squarely behind” his decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan and that the Afghan government’s collapse was quicker than anticipated.

Biden said he was faced with a choice between sticking to a previously negotiated agreement to withdraw U.S. troops this year or sending thousands more service members back into Afghanistan for a “third decade” of war.

Biden said he will not repeat mistakes of the past and did not regret his decision to proceed with the withdrawal.

“I stand squarely behind my decision,” Biden said in a televised address to the nation from the White House East Room. “After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces.”



President Joe Biden speaks about Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House, Monday, Aug. 16, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-afghanistan-taliban-5abab9d1a552dc93b10a76973a8b3d25

[ShazamIam]

1. I support the withdrawal, after reading the Pompeo/Trump peace plan. I am pissed off that the

so called liberal MSM is busy calling all the Trump supporting talking heads and attacking Biden for another Trump disaster.

[pandr32]

2. +1

[onetexan]

5. turn of the misguided MSM. In a few days Afghanistan will be an afterthought.

[ShazamIam]

10. I turned them off in 1988 but I do read about them by then it was all free market and false

both sider bullshit along with all the emoting and explaining and telling us what to think about what just happened or what law just passed in other words. By 1988 no liberal idea or policy was left un-lied about and/or ravaged as commie or socialist.

The lies:
the free market will provide health care - they stopped funding the county hospitals and let them fail or be taken over by a for profit.
the free market will provde low cost housing - vouchers that never met the need but created a new generation of slumlords
the free market will fund college for the children of the working classes when they cut funding to state colleges and privatized student loans
the free market and charter schools will provide K-12 education and do it cheaper - more scandals than students and devastating to public schools.

the free market will make crime profitable but only for investors - a success

[Devil Child]

3. Biden's decision to continue the withdrawal and exit the war was correct and brave

[onetexan]

6. +1 K&R

[Paper Roses]

11. Agree, the right decision, we did what we could.

Time to take care of our own. Trillions of dollars for a cause that was not appreciated or successful. We are not the worlds policemen. My heart goes to to the citizens of Afghanistan. They will have to face a questionable future but we have problems to face here. My heart goes out to all our personnel who sacrificed for this lost cause.

Never should have been there in the first place but that is my opinion only. Although not the same, this is Vietnam all over again. Not the same situation but the same results.

When will we decide as a country to keep our noses out of everyone else's business? Our soldiers, support personnel, our dollars to no good end.

[IronLionZion]

4. Previous presidents kept passing the buck to the next one

and Biden decided the buck stops here. 20 years is enough. Saudi Arabia is bad for girls. Are we going to go to war there too?

the original mission was supposedly to fight terrorists who attacked the US on 9/11. So if terrorists regroup in Afghanistan, I'm sure Biden would launch airstrikes. There's no need for ground troops.

[paleotn]

9. Very well said.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. Watched his remarks

and he laid it out straight and succinct. No equivocating. No bullshit.

Link to tweet

TEXT

President Biden
@POTUS
United States government official
We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on September 11, 2001—and make sure al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again.

We did that—a decade ago.

Our mission was never supposed to be nation building.
4:21 PM · Aug 16, 2021

Link to tweet

TEXT

President Biden
@POTUS
United States government official
Watch live as I deliver remarks on Afghanistan.
President Biden
Watch live as I deliver remarks on Afghanistan.
4:00 PM · Aug 16, 2021

[martingale73]

8. Blood on Republican Hands

This is all the fault of Republicans. Bush screwed up , Obama fixed, and Trump screwed it up again. When are people going to realize that Democrats are responsible for all the good foreign policy decisions and treasonous republicans screw things up?

Frankly, I am seriously questioning the voter qualifications in this country and maybe we should restrict voting. Why should we let voters who consistently vote in imbeciles and traitors still have a vote? We don't let felons vote and I think anyone voting for a Republican has worse judgement than a felon.

[Slammer]

17. control

Yeah, I've tried to think that idea through but there's no way to control it. If you start restricting who gets to vote in a reasonable way, someday you're going to get people in power who will use it in unreasonable ways.

The best I've been able to think of it to stop the generic "Get Out and Vote" advertisements from non-partisan organizations.

We don't need people to get out and vote at random.

What we need is for people to get informed, learn about the issues, figure out what side they're on for the issues, then get out and vote.

And we need to actively discourage people from going out to vote if they're doing it only out of habit or have no idea what they're doing, who's running, and what the candidates are standing for.

Our candidate ads need to focus on communicating a message rather than focusing on personalities.

The GOTV ads need to be "Get Out and Inform Yourself on the Issues: the Election is coming up soon!"

[speaktruthtopower]

12. I think he explained himself pretty well...

..the only question is should they have waited until after the fighting season ended for a more orderly evacuation.

Two trillion dollars and thousands of lives pissed away.

[Deminpenn]

13. It was a good speech, forceful and clear

Americans like and appreciate that approach.

[myohmy2]

14. Joe...

...called it right...

...if after 20 years of American help, military support, training, money and equipment the Afghan forces couldn't or wouldn't fight, they were never going to fight whenever we departed...

...if they wouldn't fight for their own country, should we?

...personally, I think many Afghan men prefer the Taliban...how else would you explain it?

...Republican wars never end well...they only make corporations and wall-street casinos rich...

...

[onetexan]

20. +1 -K&R

[TomCADem]

15. The Rapid Fall of the Afghan Govt Just Underscores How Reliant They Became...

...on the U.S. and confirms that President Biden's decision was correct. Now, if the Afghan Government had hung for three or four bloody years of civil war, then an argument could be made that with a few more tweaks, the Afghan Government could have been sustained.

[Slammer]

16. we shouldn't have to take the bad with the good

MSNBC's Deadline: White House with Nicolle Wallace was absolutely brutal on the analysis of Biden's Afghanistan speech this afternoon.

MSNBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel called Biden's assurances that we were going to evacuate Afghans who'd worked for us "a fantasy". Then he went one to tell about one translator he talked to this week who'd been waiting four years for the State Department to verify that he'd actually worked for the US military. Engel then pointed out that the translators were entered into a biometric database used by the military so positively identifying that he'd worked for the military was as simple as putting his thumb on a scanner and looking at his picture.

Engel said that it took his staff, which didn't have access to the biometric database, 45 minutes to verify the guy's identity and that he'd worked for the US military as a translator.

The leader of an NGO which came after Engel was even more brutal as he detailed how the government ignored the database his NGO compiled of the identity and current location of 14,000 former military translators as he tried over and over for months to find anyone in government who would take the information from him.

48 hours ago, they contacted him and (finally) asked him for the information he'd been trying to give them since April.

Leaving Afghanistan: absolutely the right thing to do. Go Biden! for having the courage to do it at long last.

Closing down our last airbase months before the withdrawal was supposed to end and not having a plan in advance for getting the literally tens of thousands of people who we'd promised life in the US out? That's a huge mistake and not a way to spin it into something nice.

The State Department didn't even announce until yesterday that the 2600 non-citizen embassy staff members would be allowed to come to the US if an evacuation was needed. And there was still no mention on the State Department website as of noon of whether those employees' families would be allowed to come or not.

It's enough to make me wonder if there's not pro-Trump anti-immigrant people still intentionally screwing up things at State and Defense.

[SarcasticSatyr]

18. Ultimately, nations have to build themselves ...

the best we can do is stay the hell out of it.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

19. I stand with Joe Biden

Link to tweet