Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
I think most of us would agree that regardless of how the US would have left, the Taliban would have taken over.
The issue seems to be with 4 things.
Issue 1: Lying by the Pentagon & US Department of State when it comes to the state of the Afghan Army. This has been going on much longer than Biden has been President, and isn't actually a 'POTUS' issue in my opinion. Every single US commander that had anything to do with operations there has been lying to the world for over 15 years about the state of Afghanistan.
Issue 2: Not properly making sure that the people most at risk of execution were given adequate resources in order to leave before the inevitable happened.
After the US left Vietnam, they gave refuge to roughly 130,000 people. Between the US, Canada, UK and others, I'm sure we could have done a MUCH better job at getting as many people out of Afghanistan, if not more.
Issue 3: Once the poop hit the fan, politicians did what politicians do, and didn't commit to all hands on deck in order to get everyone out. And I'm not just talking about the Afghans, but actual Canadian, American, Brits, etc, etc. Everyone from the media to diplomatic staff are stuck there in danger.
There are also numerous reports of Canadian resources being held back from helping.
Issue 4: Not making sure Kabul Airport is secure. How the US screwed this up is beyond me.
What a bloody mess.
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I think you missed a key point here, and it happens constantly. US Intelligence and other intelligence agencies were warned that this would happen, that there would be a fairly rapid collapse. The political leaders ignored the warnings. The same thing happened in 9/11, however in that case it was because the CIA for example was going through an internal war and so the President was flooded with dissenting positions from the CIA at the time.
In this case the warnings were on the same page, and the State Department in the US and the president and probably foreign affairs and the PM ignored the warnings and dragged their feet and moved with next to no urgency.
Now they're trapped in a situation that is not just a military situation, but a Political Bear trap.
With Canada there was a plan in place as far back as Thursday, and the air and troop assets were positioned in Kuwait, and they sat there with no approval from FA or DND because an election was called and the government was too busy with that. (was published earlier today by the Sun).
Now we're back in line of sending planes in when the American's give the go ahead to use he airfield.