I'm still trying to figure out why the US is so willing to cut and run from Afghanistan in such a pathetic manner. The main reasons that come to mind is that Biden wants to be remembered for something during his presidency. Or, the US think its allies will be more able and willing to join its fleet build up to counter China if their allies are not spending their resources on Afghanistan.
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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U.S. number 1 diplomat Blinken just said on CNN this is clearly not Saigon. Lol
No wonder he's such a failure in diplomacy. If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, then it is a duck. Blinken is no Kissinger! Such a light weight.
I hope Taipei take the words from the old Vietnam saying.
Well it took the US two months to chase the Taliban out of Kabul the first time around. That was considered a blitz as the Taliban resistance collapsed just as quickly in the major centres, and a resounding victory for the US. Of course it dragged on for a couple more months before Kandahar and other provinces were taken and strategic dominance was established, but the point still stands.
Another way to look at this would be whether the Afghan govnt and the ANA would've been hanging around still had the Taliban not gone on an all-out offensive once the US had just up and left.
Biden was not the one who decided the withdraw. It was Trump who set May 1st. Biden actually postponed to Sept 11. Yet Trump was not the one who initiated the withdraw, it was Obama.
So you can see that, there is REALLY NOTHING special/secrete/complicated about the "cut and run". The only reason is that the U.S. as a whole realized that they are defeated, pulling out ASAP is the only right thing to do regardless who in the white house.
It's nothing so mysterious or devious, it's something personal Biden wanted to do for a while. I remember a piece that claimed he once told Richard Holbrooke, "I'm not sending my boy into that war again."
My take on this is that you are seeing early fruit of the Sino-Russian Strategic Partnership. The US was at the height of its Unipolar moment, twenty years ago and able to to buy or bully access corridors into the country.
That time has passed and I have no doubt that the US/NATO was told in no uncertain terms to get our while it could as the corridors were about to close for ever. Turkmenistan is now joining the CSTO and so that route via Turkey and Georgia is closing. China can now back up Pakistan and close that route in. The US is hardly going to get a route from China, Russia or Iran, so that is game over.
The Regional powers are now much stronger than they were and working in full co-ordination. It has been a game changer.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Nah, this is just what happens when you live in your own little post-truth make-believe bubble.
In America, being right is no longer all that important and people get into positions of power by telling the people what they want to hear. Is it any wonder that such people surround themselves with advisors who tell them only what they want to hear in turn?
Biden didn’t pull out of Afghanistan to burn it all down, he pulled out because all his advisors all told him the trillions, decades and mountains of ‘high tech’ American arms had made the Afghan government powerful enough to stand up to the Taliban.
America left because it wanted Syria 2.0 on China’s boarder where a long and brutal never ending series of civil wars in the country would at best spill over into neighbouring countries, specifically China, thereby sucking China in militarily to try to stabilise the situation and getting burnt just like them and the soviets before them. Worst case it creates a permanent raging wildfire of conflicts that effectively blocks BRI.
No western ‘expert’ would have told you two months ago that the Afghan government with disappear so rapidly and completely and pathetically like a whimper of a fart in a hurricane. That there is the most damning western weakness and problem this who fiasco exposes.
I think the Taliban and Chinese gov saw right thru the trick and hence the meeting/formal recognition.
