Afghanistan - Trump vs. Biden

It's not all that often that I say anything critical of President Trump. I tend to think, all things considered, that he did a remarkable job as President. Who else on this planet could have withstood as much undeserved and politically motivated bad press and still exhibited a positive attitude overall? Unlike the Dems, Donald Trump believed in America and if you paid any attention at all, it showed.

But when it comes to Afghanistan I don't get it. If you recall, Trump planned to be out of Afghanistan by May 1 (2021 for future reference) but when Biden took power he reneged on that agreement and insisted for whatever reason, most likely public relations but whatever, he insisted on the pullout day being September 11, 2021, the twentieth anniversary (?) of 9/11 which was the catalyst for the Afghan war in the first place. There were other reasons for America invading Afghanistan but that has no relevance now. There was the gas pipeline. There was the way women were treated under Taliban rule. There was the chokehold the Taliban put on the illicit opiates trade starving the CIA out of much-needed black money revenues. None of that pertains to setting the date for America's withdrawal though.

Hard to say but chances are that change struck a wrong chord with the Taliban but you know, I suspect the Taliban was already pissed off at the U.S. anyway considering the twenty-year-long war.

What baffles me is why do we make the assumption that President Trump would have had more success than Biden has had with the withdrawal? By that I mean it was obvious that the Taliban was a major fighting force in Afghanistan and that its influence on Afghanistan as well as its goals were a significant concern. Afghanistan, even with military help from America and other countries, couldn't eliminate the Taliban threat. They were hardened and dedicated warriors, not just good at recruiting but life-long warriors and twenty years of war against them couldn't dampen the threat they posed. And that perspective, as significant as it is, overlooks the appeal that revolutionaries like the Taliban would have within the Afghan population. They are heroes for throwing out foreign occupiers. That vein must run deep in Afghanistan.

So it seemed naïve to me to imagine that America could withdraw its forces without the country falling back under Taliban rule. Sure no foreign outsiders thought it would be as easy as it was to overthrow the Afghan government but what distorted calculus was used to imagine the Taliban takeover wasn't inevitable or at least extremely likely?

Had the American (and other foreign) occupiers been able to establish a government that wasn't corrupt and self-enriching, propped up by the drug trade, then perhaps the Taliban's popular appeal might not have been an issue. But that never happened.

So how was the Taliban takeover not inevitable once the occupying forces were gone? It doesn't matter who the President of the United States is. The takeover seemed inevitable. And looking back on the events of the past few weeks my instincts seem to have been right.

The only way Trump might have made a difference is if he did an about face and ramped the war back up to eliminate the Taliban threat. Had Trump remained in power it's hard to imagine that the RINO Republicans and the covert Dems wouldn't have seriously threatened impeachment had Trump gone ahead with his withdrawal.

So the options were this. Either Trump withdraws the troops and this time really does get impeached (for crossing the line with slimeball Lindsey Graham) or he sends in troops and renews the war. I just can't imagine that tough talk alone, something Trump seems able to do and Biden doesn't, would have solved the problem. The American occupation, sorry to say, was corrupt right from the start and that corruption undermined the "democracy building" that supposedly was going on.

As far as Biden goes, how could he possibly not have realized all this? Some of the snippets I've heard from him recently indicate to me that he had been briefed and knew the reality of it but he had to lie about it. The American people didn't want to face reality so he had to lie about it since the last thing he wanted to do was send the troops back in for another round of war. Hopefully Biden will get away with it. Hopefully he'll call off the CIA long enough to evacuate without major bloodshed. Hopefully the Taliban will allow it. Maybe it's in the Taliban's best interest to renew its war against the western world but I doubt it.

But imagining that Donald Trump's tough talk routine would solve the problems in Afghanistan... dream on. The Taliban knows how to talk tough too and back it up.

Will Afghanistan be better off under Taliban rule? Will they choke off the world's heroine supply the way they did twenty years ago? They might. The world is against them but they might. They might even work with China to work on legitimate trade options. Hard to say. China wants that. Biden might even go along with it. Then again, China might want to get in on the opium trade, Afghanistan's strongest export, as payback for the opium wars. Hard to say. Not likely but hard to say. They're already doing it with fentanyl so why not opium too?

But Trump and his cheerleaders dumping on Biden for the problems in Afghanistan? Let the withdrawal happen first, then do your political bickering. Idiots!

*****

Update (later in the same day)

Well here ya go. This explains it. Back in the Obama/Biden era the Afghan army took their work just about as seriously as Biden takes his work now!

Seems obvious at this point why the Taliban were met with little to no resistance.. (Video)