Afghanistan

I am no expert so I won’t say much. To me:

The execution of the withdrawal has been bad. It’s a failure of US intelligence that they didn’t know the government would collapse so quickly
Biden made the right call.
The public doesn’t care that much. It doesn’t affect most of us directly. I remember the dire warnings about what would happen to us if Vietnam fell to the communists and they were overblown.
Media has given this too much coverage. It’s very dramatic but see #4. I saw very little coverage about Biden’s increase in food stamp amounts which affects more people right now.
Bush, Obama and Trump deserve blame along with Biden.
The media has been harsh on Biden just like they were on Hillary Clinton’s emails because they are afraid of Republican criticism that they are pro-Democrat.
Trump and his supporters are lying about Trump’s role in this situation.

Here are some worthwhile takes from Twitter:

Spare me the make believe indignation from Republicans about the Afghanistan evacuation.

1/ Here's the story of the relentless Republican effort (led by President Trump) to undermine and destroy the programs that help bring Afghan refugees to the U.S.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 22, 2021

What’s happening is that leaving is popular, but it’s unpopular with natsec elites and their allies in the media.

So to punish Biden and send a message to future presidents they’ve cooked up this fake middle ground position that you are now espousing. https://t.co/IvwSQKd4Om
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 22, 2021

Fact check: Trump officials rewrite history on Afghanistan. https://t.co/k5nTxAFzVI
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 22, 2021

General McMaster confirms Trump authorized his Sec of State Pompeo to sign a Surrender agreement with the Taliban, totally undermining The Afghan Gov't and Militaries confidence in US Support..which lead to them having to flee fearing the expected Taliban Takeover of Afghanistgan pic.twitter.com/3qtNlRqyOL
— Kamatsu (@DarkWebWarrior) August 20, 2021

fascinating numbers from Andrew Tyndall.

From 2015 through 2019 this is how many minutes network news covered Afghanistan:

ABC: 16
CBS: 25
NBC: 16

less than on hour of coverage, total, over five years;
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) August 19, 2021

Enough with the Saigon/Afghanistan comparisons already. This is a proxy for a deeper claim — that US society will be just as traumatized as it was in the 1970s. But for many reasons, that's highly unlikely. I talked to historian Michael Kazin about this:https://t.co/8Pg1VWHOIh
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) August 16, 2021

failure to anticipate speed of Afghan collapse is the largest and most obvious Biden error

apart from that, i asked D and R foreign policy vets on opposite sides of underlying withdrawal issue to specify errors in execution

what they said:
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 16, 2021

Category: Afghanistan

Tom Cotton needs to be quiet

Takes on Afghanistan