Supreme leader Biden

[Μπίστης]

Έχω προβλέψει από χθες ότι θα τον αρρωστήσουν πριν την ώρα του.

Πίστευα πως θα τον άφηναν δυό χρονάκια ...

[Καραμελίτσα]

Spoiler

Biden’s Afghanistan Surrender
The President tries to duck responsibility for a calamitous withdrawal.

President Biden’s statement on Saturday washing his hands of Afghanistan deserves to go down as one of the most shameful in history by a Commander in Chief at such a moment of American retreat.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-afgh ... e_facebook

Το ίδιο κράξιμο και το Atlantic, το έβαλα χθες. Και μιλάμε για 100% δικα τους μέσα που λειτουργούσαν σαν μηχανές αντί Τραμπ προπαγάνδας.

Δεν έχω λόγια:


https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house ... -justinian


KLAMA

Επίσης, ιστοριογραφία από τα Λιντλ.

[Scouser]

[nostromos]

Αχ, μακάρι, μακάρι να βγάλουν από τώρα μπροστά την Κάμαλα.

η πιο προσφατη ανάρτηση της Καμάλα αφορά τον κοβιντ...

[George_V]

Έρχεται η 25η Τροπολογία?

[Orion22]

Αχ, μακάρι, μακάρι να βγάλουν από τώρα μπροστά την Κάμαλα.

η πιο προσφατη ανάρτηση της Καμάλα αφορά τον κοβιντ...

Έρχεται η 25η Τροπολογία?

κάπου διάβαζα "πέφτει ξύλο" μεταξύ τους
της ζήτησαν να βγεί να μιλήσει και τους έγραψε λέγοντας πως ασχολείται με άλλα τώρα..

επίσης η άλλη η μαλάκω η πσακι ξεκίνησε τις διακοπές τις από χτες

[George_V]

Πάντως για να ισχύσει η 25η Τροπολογία χρειάζονται οι υπογραφές από όλο το Υπουργικό Συμβούλιο.

Ένας να μην υπογράψει δεν ισχύει.

[Orion22]

Aν τα γυρνάει και η & η PRAVDA των πασόκων...

For Biden, Images of Defeat He Wanted to Avoid

President Biden will go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan.

After seven months in which the Biden administration seemed to exude much-needed competence, everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.
After seven months in which the Biden administration seemed to exude much-needed competence, everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
David E. Sanger

By David E. Sanger
Published Aug. 15, 2021Updated Aug. 16, 2021, 8:18 a.m. ET
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

Rarely in modern presidential history have words come back to bite an American commander in chief as swiftly as these from President Biden a little more than five weeks ago: “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States in Afghanistan.”

Then, digging the hole deeper, he added, “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

On Sunday, the scramble to evacuate American civilians and embassy employees from Kabul — the very image that Mr. Biden and his aides agreed they had to avoid during recent meetings in the Oval Office — unfolded live on television, not from the U.S. Embassy roof but from the landing pad next to the building. And now that the Afghan government has collapsed with astonishing speed, the Taliban seem certain to be back in full control of the country when the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is commemorated less than a month from today — exactly as they were 20 summers ago.

Mr. Biden will go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a long-brewing, humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan. After seven months in which his administration seemed to exude much-needed competence — getting more than 70 percent of the country’s adults vaccinated, engineering surging job growth and making progress toward a bipartisan infrastructure bill — everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.

Even many of Mr. Biden’s allies who believe he made the right decision to finally exit a war that the United States could not win and that was no longer in its national interest concede he made a series of major mistakes in executing the withdrawal. The only question is how politically damaging those will prove to be, or whether Americans who cheered at 2020 campaign rallies when both President Donald J. Trump and Mr. Biden promised to get out of Afghanistan will shrug their shoulders and say that it had to end, even if it ended badly.
Image
The perimeter of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Sunday night. The scramble to evacuate American civilians and embassy employees unfolded live on television.
The perimeter of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Sunday night. The scramble to evacuate American civilians and embassy employees unfolded live on television.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Mr. Biden knew the risks. He has often noted that he came to office with more foreign policy experience than any president in recent memory, arguably since Dwight D. Eisenhower. In meetings this spring about the coming U.S. withdrawal, Mr. Biden told aides that it was crucial they avoid the kind of scene that yielded the iconic photographs of Americans and Vietnamese scrambling up a ladder to a helicopter on a rooftop near the U.S. Embassy in Saigon when it was frantically evacuated in 1975, as the Vietcong swept into the city.

( )

Yet having decided in April to set the Sept. 11 anniversary as the date for the final American withdrawal, he and his aides failed to get the interpreters and others who helped American forces out of the country fast enough, and they were mired in immigration paperwork. There was no reliable mechanism in place for contractors to keep the Afghan Air Force flying as Americans packed up. The plan Mr. Biden talked about in late June to create what he called an “over-the-horizon capability” to bolster the Afghan forces in case Kabul was threatened was only half-baked before those Afghan forces collapsed.

By their own account, Mr. Biden’s aides thought they had the luxury of time, maybe 18 months or so, because of intelligence assessments that wildly overestimated the capabilities of an Afghan Army that disintegrated, often before shots were even fired. On July 8, the same day he said there was no need to worry about an imminent Taliban takeover, Mr. Biden said that “relative to the training and capacity” of the Afghan security forces, the Taliban are “not even close in terms of their capacity.” He now knows that what they lacked in capacity, they made up for in strategy, determination and drive.
Editors’ Picks
Are the Kids All Right? Ask the Camp Directors.
A Skeptical Stock Analyst Wins Big by Seeking Out Frauds
Overlooked No More: Hettie Anderson, Sculptors’ Model Who Evaded Fame

“There are lessons to be learned on how each administration handled Afghanistan from start to finish, and we owe it to the members of the military and other Americans who put their lives in harm’s way to plumb these lessons to inform future decision making,” said Michèle Flournoy, who served as the No. 3 official in the Pentagon in the Obama administration and was a leading contender to become Mr. Biden’s secretary of defense.

“For the Biden administration the question will be whether enough contingency planning was done to sustain critical counterterrorism operations,” and whether we “meet our obligations to the Afghans who helped us, reduce the risks associated with withdrawal, and enable some continued support to keep the Afghan military viable.”

Mr. Biden was handed, of course, a withdrawal that was already underway — engineered by Mr. Trump in the last year of his presidency, and sealed by his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who met with the Taliban.

“One of the gravest mistakes was President Trump’s signing of an agreement with the Taliban that promised a U.S. withdrawal without putting a comprehensive cease-fire in place,” Ms. Flournoy noted, “then unilaterally drawing down U.S. forces to a level that was unsustainable. This left President Biden in a much more difficult position.”
Image
Members of the Taliban in a captured police vehicle in Kabul on Sunday. The Afghan government has collapsed with astonishing speed.
Members of the Taliban in a captured police vehicle in Kabul on Sunday. The Afghan government has collapsed with astonishing speed.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Even the most seasoned hands in the politics of South Asia, like Ryan Crocker, a retired career diplomat who served as an ambassador to Afghanistan under President Barack Obama and to Iraq under President George W. Bush, thought there was more time.

“A prolonged civil war is a more likely outcome, frankly,” he said seven days ago on ABC’s “This Week,” “than a swift Taliban takeover of the entire country.” But he went on to say that Mr. Biden had “now taken complete ownership of President Trump’s” commitments to exit the country. “He owns it,” Mr. Crocker said. “And I think it is already an indelible stain on his presidency.”

On Sunday, Mr. Biden was publicly silent. The White House released a photograph of him in a video briefing at Camp David. He appeared alone in the photo, his aides beaming in. And it was left to them to explain why he thought, in July, that the Afghan forces would put up a tough fight.

Republicans leapt on the images of Americans being evacuated, naturally, and of Ashraf Ghani, the country’s president, who fled without a succession plan and without a deal with the Taliban about the future governance of the country — an agreement envisioned in the Trump-era deal.

Some of those Republicans had short memories. Many cheered on President George W. Bush when he ordered the invasion of Afghanistan to rout Al Qaeda. They went along when he kept adding objectives: sending girls to school, building a model democracy, re-envisioning the Afghan military as a miniature version of United States forces, even if that model didn’t fit.

They applauded when Mr. Bush, in his second inaugural address in 2005, declared it would be the mission of the United States to promote democracy around the world. A decade later, they cheered Mr. Trump for saying America would get out of unwinnable wars. On Sunday, they chastised Mr. Biden for carrying through on the strategy, as if it would be cost-free.

“I think it’s an unmitigated disaster,” Representative Michael McCaul of Texas said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, contending that Afghanistan would return to “a pre-9/11 state — a breeding ground for terrorism.” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken countered that the U.S. ability to detect, track and kill terrorists was far greater than it was two decades ago.

But Mr. McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, seemed to be trying out themes for the next election season when he said of Mr. Biden: “He could have planned for it. He could have had a strategy for this.”

Now, he said, “there is still no strategy other than race to the airport and evacuate as many people as you can.”

In fact, there is a strategy, but not one that Mr. Biden can easily sell amid the images of chaos in Kabul. To his mind, years of refashioning American foreign policy in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks gave China room to rise, Russia room to disrupt, Iran and North Korea room to focus on their nuclear ambitions. Getting out of Afghanistan is part of a broader effort to refocus on core strategic challenges, and new threats from cyberspace to outer space. But this weekend was evidence that the past is never really in the past.
Image
Demonstrators near the White House in Lafayette Square on Sunday.
Demonstrators near the White House in Lafayette Square on Sunday.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

The administration’s defense against the criticism of its failure to move fast enough in Afghanistan has been to acknowledge it was taken by surprise by the speed of the collapse, but to insist there were plans in place. The Pentagon press secretary, John F. Kirby, said that a rehearsal of the evacuation effort “was held as far back as May,” and that Marines based on Iwo Jima were positioned to fly to Kabul.

“The reason why we have responded quickly in the past few days is because we were ready for this contingency,” Mr. Kirby said.

But Mr. Biden’s own words make clear he was confident this day would not come for a long time, if ever. He repeatedly said he had “no regrets” about his decision, and would bear no responsibility if the Taliban took over, in part because Mr. Trump had signed the deal in February 2020 that set a May 1, 2021, date for complete American withdrawal. (Although Mr. Biden extended the withdrawal date to Sept. 11, almost all American troops were gone by early July.)

The result of the Trump-Taliban accord, Mr. Biden said Saturday, was that he was left facing a Taliban force “in the strongest position militarily since 2001,” and a date by which all American forces had to be out.

Mr. Blinken stepped around questions on Sunday about why more was not done earlier to get Afghan interpreters for the U.S. military and other allies at risk of Taliban retaliation out of the country. He was also asked why more Americans were not moved earlier out of the embassy in Kabul, as many at the Pentagon had urged, before the scale of the collapse became apparent.
Image
Even many of President Biden’s allies who believe he made the right decision to finally exit a war that the United States could not win concede he made a series of major mistakes in executing the withdrawal.
Even many of President Biden’s allies who believe he made the right decision to finally exit a war that the United States could not win concede he made a series of major mistakes in executing the withdrawal.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

“The inability of Afghan security forces to defend their country has played a very powerful role,” Mr. Blinken said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

All true. But it is Mr. Biden who may be remembered for his role in wildly overestimating the strength of the Afghan forces, and not moving fast enough when it became clear the scenarios he had been presented with were wrong.
The Fall of Kabul
Kabul’s Sudden Fall to Taliban Ends U.S. Era in Afghanistan
Aug. 15, 2021
Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations
Aug. 14, 2021
Taliban Capture Strategic Cities as Biden Speeds Troop Deployment to Afghanistan
Aug. 14, 2021

David E. Sanger is a White House and national security correspondent. In a 38-year reporting career for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.” @SangerNYT • Facebook
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 16, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: For Biden, Images He Wanted to Avoid. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/us/p ... ticleShare


Otto Weininger

[Otto Weininger]

Spoiler

Aν τα γυρνάει και η & η PRAVDA των πασόκων...

For Biden, Images of Defeat He Wanted to Avoid

President Biden will go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan.

After seven months in which the Biden administration seemed to exude much-needed competence, everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.
After seven months in which the Biden administration seemed to exude much-needed competence, everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
David E. Sanger

By David E. Sanger
Published Aug. 15, 2021Updated Aug. 16, 2021, 8:18 a.m. ET
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

Rarely in modern presidential history have words come back to bite an American commander in chief as swiftly as these from President Biden a little more than five weeks ago: “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States in Afghanistan.”

Then, digging the hole deeper, he added, “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

On Sunday, the scramble to evacuate American civilians and embassy employees from Kabul — the very image that Mr. Biden and his aides agreed they had to avoid during recent meetings in the Oval Office — unfolded live on television, not from the U.S. Embassy roof but from the landing pad next to the building. And now that the Afghan government has collapsed with astonishing speed, the Taliban seem certain to be back in full control of the country when the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is commemorated less than a month from today — exactly as they were 20 summers ago.

Mr. Biden will go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a long-brewing, humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan. After seven months in which his administration seemed to exude much-needed competence — getting more than 70 percent of the country’s adults vaccinated, engineering surging job growth and making progress toward a bipartisan infrastructure bill — everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.

Even many of Mr. Biden’s allies who believe he made the right decision to finally exit a war that the United States could not win and that was no longer in its national interest concede he made a series of major mistakes in executing the withdrawal. The only question is how politically damaging those will prove to be, or whether Americans who cheered at 2020 campaign rallies when both President Donald J. Trump and Mr. Biden promised to get out of Afghanistan will shrug their shoulders and say that it had to end, even if it ended badly.
Image
The perimeter of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Sunday night. The scramble to evacuate American civilians and embassy employees unfolded live on television.
The perimeter of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Sunday night. The scramble to evacuate American civilians and embassy employees unfolded live on television.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Mr. Biden knew the risks. He has often noted that he came to office with more foreign policy experience than any president in recent memory, arguably since Dwight D. Eisenhower. In meetings this spring about the coming U.S. withdrawal, Mr. Biden told aides that it was crucial they avoid the kind of scene that yielded the iconic photographs of Americans and Vietnamese scrambling up a ladder to a helicopter on a rooftop near the U.S. Embassy in Saigon when it was frantically evacuated in 1975, as the Vietcong swept into the city.

( )

Yet having decided in April to set the Sept. 11 anniversary as the date for the final American withdrawal, he and his aides failed to get the interpreters and others who helped American forces out of the country fast enough, and they were mired in immigration paperwork. There was no reliable mechanism in place for contractors to keep the Afghan Air Force flying as Americans packed up. The plan Mr. Biden talked about in late June to create what he called an “over-the-horizon capability” to bolster the Afghan forces in case Kabul was threatened was only half-baked before those Afghan forces collapsed.

By their own account, Mr. Biden’s aides thought they had the luxury of time, maybe 18 months or so, because of intelligence assessments that wildly overestimated the capabilities of an Afghan Army that disintegrated, often before shots were even fired. On July 8, the same day he said there was no need to worry about an imminent Taliban takeover, Mr. Biden said that “relative to the training and capacity” of the Afghan security forces, the Taliban are “not even close in terms of their capacity.” He now knows that what they lacked in capacity, they made up for in strategy, determination and drive.
Editors’ Picks
Are the Kids All Right? Ask the Camp Directors.
A Skeptical Stock Analyst Wins Big by Seeking Out Frauds
Overlooked No More: Hettie Anderson, Sculptors’ Model Who Evaded Fame

“There are lessons to be learned on how each administration handled Afghanistan from start to finish, and we owe it to the members of the military and other Americans who put their lives in harm’s way to plumb these lessons to inform future decision making,” said Michèle Flournoy, who served as the No. 3 official in the Pentagon in the Obama administration and was a leading contender to become Mr. Biden’s secretary of defense.

“For the Biden administration the question will be whether enough contingency planning was done to sustain critical counterterrorism operations,” and whether we “meet our obligations to the Afghans who helped us, reduce the risks associated with withdrawal, and enable some continued support to keep the Afghan military viable.”

Mr. Biden was handed, of course, a withdrawal that was already underway — engineered by Mr. Trump in the last year of his presidency, and sealed by his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who met with the Taliban.

“One of the gravest mistakes was President Trump’s signing of an agreement with the Taliban that promised a U.S. withdrawal without putting a comprehensive cease-fire in place,” Ms. Flournoy noted, “then unilaterally drawing down U.S. forces to a level that was unsustainable. This left President Biden in a much more difficult position.”
Image
Members of the Taliban in a captured police vehicle in Kabul on Sunday. The Afghan government has collapsed with astonishing speed.
Members of the Taliban in a captured police vehicle in Kabul on Sunday. The Afghan government has collapsed with astonishing speed.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Even the most seasoned hands in the politics of South Asia, like Ryan Crocker, a retired career diplomat who served as an ambassador to Afghanistan under President Barack Obama and to Iraq under President George W. Bush, thought there was more time.

“A prolonged civil war is a more likely outcome, frankly,” he said seven days ago on ABC’s “This Week,” “than a swift Taliban takeover of the entire country.” But he went on to say that Mr. Biden had “now taken complete ownership of President Trump’s” commitments to exit the country. “He owns it,” Mr. Crocker said. “And I think it is already an indelible stain on his presidency.”

On Sunday, Mr. Biden was publicly silent. The White House released a photograph of him in a video briefing at Camp David. He appeared alone in the photo, his aides beaming in. And it was left to them to explain why he thought, in July, that the Afghan forces would put up a tough fight.

Republicans leapt on the images of Americans being evacuated, naturally, and of Ashraf Ghani, the country’s president, who fled without a succession plan and without a deal with the Taliban about the future governance of the country — an agreement envisioned in the Trump-era deal.

Some of those Republicans had short memories. Many cheered on President George W. Bush when he ordered the invasion of Afghanistan to rout Al Qaeda. They went along when he kept adding objectives: sending girls to school, building a model democracy, re-envisioning the Afghan military as a miniature version of United States forces, even if that model didn’t fit.

They applauded when Mr. Bush, in his second inaugural address in 2005, declared it would be the mission of the United States to promote democracy around the world. A decade later, they cheered Mr. Trump for saying America would get out of unwinnable wars. On Sunday, they chastised Mr. Biden for carrying through on the strategy, as if it would be cost-free.

“I think it’s an unmitigated disaster,” Representative Michael McCaul of Texas said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, contending that Afghanistan would return to “a pre-9/11 state — a breeding ground for terrorism.” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken countered that the U.S. ability to detect, track and kill terrorists was far greater than it was two decades ago.

But Mr. McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, seemed to be trying out themes for the next election season when he said of Mr. Biden: “He could have planned for it. He could have had a strategy for this.”

Now, he said, “there is still no strategy other than race to the airport and evacuate as many people as you can.”

In fact, there is a strategy, but not one that Mr. Biden can easily sell amid the images of chaos in Kabul. To his mind, years of refashioning American foreign policy in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks gave China room to rise, Russia room to disrupt, Iran and North Korea room to focus on their nuclear ambitions. Getting out of Afghanistan is part of a broader effort to refocus on core strategic challenges, and new threats from cyberspace to outer space. But this weekend was evidence that the past is never really in the past.
Image
Demonstrators near the White House in Lafayette Square on Sunday.
Demonstrators near the White House in Lafayette Square on Sunday.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

The administration’s defense against the criticism of its failure to move fast enough in Afghanistan has been to acknowledge it was taken by surprise by the speed of the collapse, but to insist there were plans in place. The Pentagon press secretary, John F. Kirby, said that a rehearsal of the evacuation effort “was held as far back as May,” and that Marines based on Iwo Jima were positioned to fly to Kabul.

“The reason why we have responded quickly in the past few days is because we were ready for this contingency,” Mr. Kirby said.

But Mr. Biden’s own words make clear he was confident this day would not come for a long time, if ever. He repeatedly said he had “no regrets” about his decision, and would bear no responsibility if the Taliban took over, in part because Mr. Trump had signed the deal in February 2020 that set a May 1, 2021, date for complete American withdrawal. (Although Mr. Biden extended the withdrawal date to Sept. 11, almost all American troops were gone by early July.)

The result of the Trump-Taliban accord, Mr. Biden said Saturday, was that he was left facing a Taliban force “in the strongest position militarily since 2001,” and a date by which all American forces had to be out.

Mr. Blinken stepped around questions on Sunday about why more was not done earlier to get Afghan interpreters for the U.S. military and other allies at risk of Taliban retaliation out of the country. He was also asked why more Americans were not moved earlier out of the embassy in Kabul, as many at the Pentagon had urged, before the scale of the collapse became apparent.
Image
Even many of President Biden’s allies who believe he made the right decision to finally exit a war that the United States could not win concede he made a series of major mistakes in executing the withdrawal.
Even many of President Biden’s allies who believe he made the right decision to finally exit a war that the United States could not win concede he made a series of major mistakes in executing the withdrawal.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

“The inability of Afghan security forces to defend their country has played a very powerful role,” Mr. Blinken said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

All true. But it is Mr. Biden who may be remembered for his role in wildly overestimating the strength of the Afghan forces, and not moving fast enough when it became clear the scenarios he had been presented with were wrong.
The Fall of Kabul
Kabul’s Sudden Fall to Taliban Ends U.S. Era in Afghanistan
Aug. 15, 2021
Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations
Aug. 14, 2021
Taliban Capture Strategic Cities as Biden Speeds Troop Deployment to Afghanistan
Aug. 14, 2021

David E. Sanger is a White House and national security correspondent. In a 38-year reporting career for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.” @SangerNYT • Facebook
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 16, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: For Biden, Images He Wanted to Avoid. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/us/p ... ticleShare

Otto Weininger

Ούτε ένα χρόνο δεν θα τον αφήσουν τον μπάρμπα Τζο.

[talaipwros]

https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/ ... 0498225153

[Λίνο Βεντούρα]

Spoiler

Aν τα γυρνάει και η & η PRAVDA των πασόκων...

For Biden, Images of Defeat He Wanted to Avoid

President Biden will go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan.

After seven months in which the Biden administration seemed to exude much-needed competence, everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.
After seven months in which the Biden administration seemed to exude much-needed competence, everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
David E. Sanger

By David E. Sanger
Published Aug. 15, 2021Updated Aug. 16, 2021, 8:18 a.m. ET
阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

Rarely in modern presidential history have words come back to bite an American commander in chief as swiftly as these from President Biden a little more than five weeks ago: “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States in Afghanistan.”

Then, digging the hole deeper, he added, “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”

On Sunday, the scramble to evacuate American civilians and embassy employees from Kabul — the very image that Mr. Biden and his aides agreed they had to avoid during recent meetings in the Oval Office — unfolded live on television, not from the U.S. Embassy roof but from the landing pad next to the building. And now that the Afghan government has collapsed with astonishing speed, the Taliban seem certain to be back in full control of the country when the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is commemorated less than a month from today — exactly as they were 20 summers ago.

Mr. Biden will go down in history, fairly or unfairly, as the president who presided over a long-brewing, humiliating final act in the American experiment in Afghanistan. After seven months in which his administration seemed to exude much-needed competence — getting more than 70 percent of the country’s adults vaccinated, engineering surging job growth and making progress toward a bipartisan infrastructure bill — everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.

Even many of Mr. Biden’s allies who believe he made the right decision to finally exit a war that the United States could not win and that was no longer in its national interest concede he made a series of major mistakes in executing the withdrawal. The only question is how politically damaging those will prove to be, or whether Americans who cheered at 2020 campaign rallies when both President Donald J. Trump and Mr. Biden promised to get out of Afghanistan will shrug their shoulders and say that it had to end, even if it ended badly.
Image
The perimeter of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Sunday night. The scramble to evacuate American civilians and embassy employees unfolded live on television.
The perimeter of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on Sunday night. The scramble to evacuate American civilians and embassy employees unfolded live on television.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Mr. Biden knew the risks. He has often noted that he came to office with more foreign policy experience than any president in recent memory, arguably since Dwight D. Eisenhower. In meetings this spring about the coming U.S. withdrawal, Mr. Biden told aides that it was crucial they avoid the kind of scene that yielded the iconic photographs of Americans and Vietnamese scrambling up a ladder to a helicopter on a rooftop near the U.S. Embassy in Saigon when it was frantically evacuated in 1975, as the Vietcong swept into the city.

( )

Yet having decided in April to set the Sept. 11 anniversary as the date for the final American withdrawal, he and his aides failed to get the interpreters and others who helped American forces out of the country fast enough, and they were mired in immigration paperwork. There was no reliable mechanism in place for contractors to keep the Afghan Air Force flying as Americans packed up. The plan Mr. Biden talked about in late June to create what he called an “over-the-horizon capability” to bolster the Afghan forces in case Kabul was threatened was only half-baked before those Afghan forces collapsed.

By their own account, Mr. Biden’s aides thought they had the luxury of time, maybe 18 months or so, because of intelligence assessments that wildly overestimated the capabilities of an Afghan Army that disintegrated, often before shots were even fired. On July 8, the same day he said there was no need to worry about an imminent Taliban takeover, Mr. Biden said that “relative to the training and capacity” of the Afghan security forces, the Taliban are “not even close in terms of their capacity.” He now knows that what they lacked in capacity, they made up for in strategy, determination and drive.
Editors’ Picks
Are the Kids All Right? Ask the Camp Directors.
A Skeptical Stock Analyst Wins Big by Seeking Out Frauds
Overlooked No More: Hettie Anderson, Sculptors’ Model Who Evaded Fame

“There are lessons to be learned on how each administration handled Afghanistan from start to finish, and we owe it to the members of the military and other Americans who put their lives in harm’s way to plumb these lessons to inform future decision making,” said Michèle Flournoy, who served as the No. 3 official in the Pentagon in the Obama administration and was a leading contender to become Mr. Biden’s secretary of defense.

“For the Biden administration the question will be whether enough contingency planning was done to sustain critical counterterrorism operations,” and whether we “meet our obligations to the Afghans who helped us, reduce the risks associated with withdrawal, and enable some continued support to keep the Afghan military viable.”

Mr. Biden was handed, of course, a withdrawal that was already underway — engineered by Mr. Trump in the last year of his presidency, and sealed by his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who met with the Taliban.

“One of the gravest mistakes was President Trump’s signing of an agreement with the Taliban that promised a U.S. withdrawal without putting a comprehensive cease-fire in place,” Ms. Flournoy noted, “then unilaterally drawing down U.S. forces to a level that was unsustainable. This left President Biden in a much more difficult position.”
Image
Members of the Taliban in a captured police vehicle in Kabul on Sunday. The Afghan government has collapsed with astonishing speed.
Members of the Taliban in a captured police vehicle in Kabul on Sunday. The Afghan government has collapsed with astonishing speed.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Even the most seasoned hands in the politics of South Asia, like Ryan Crocker, a retired career diplomat who served as an ambassador to Afghanistan under President Barack Obama and to Iraq under President George W. Bush, thought there was more time.

“A prolonged civil war is a more likely outcome, frankly,” he said seven days ago on ABC’s “This Week,” “than a swift Taliban takeover of the entire country.” But he went on to say that Mr. Biden had “now taken complete ownership of President Trump’s” commitments to exit the country. “He owns it,” Mr. Crocker said. “And I think it is already an indelible stain on his presidency.”

On Sunday, Mr. Biden was publicly silent. The White House released a photograph of him in a video briefing at Camp David. He appeared alone in the photo, his aides beaming in. And it was left to them to explain why he thought, in July, that the Afghan forces would put up a tough fight.

Republicans leapt on the images of Americans being evacuated, naturally, and of Ashraf Ghani, the country’s president, who fled without a succession plan and without a deal with the Taliban about the future governance of the country — an agreement envisioned in the Trump-era deal.

Some of those Republicans had short memories. Many cheered on President George W. Bush when he ordered the invasion of Afghanistan to rout Al Qaeda. They went along when he kept adding objectives: sending girls to school, building a model democracy, re-envisioning the Afghan military as a miniature version of United States forces, even if that model didn’t fit.

They applauded when Mr. Bush, in his second inaugural address in 2005, declared it would be the mission of the United States to promote democracy around the world. A decade later, they cheered Mr. Trump for saying America would get out of unwinnable wars. On Sunday, they chastised Mr. Biden for carrying through on the strategy, as if it would be cost-free.

“I think it’s an unmitigated disaster,” Representative Michael McCaul of Texas said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, contending that Afghanistan would return to “a pre-9/11 state — a breeding ground for terrorism.” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken countered that the U.S. ability to detect, track and kill terrorists was far greater than it was two decades ago.

But Mr. McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, seemed to be trying out themes for the next election season when he said of Mr. Biden: “He could have planned for it. He could have had a strategy for this.”

Now, he said, “there is still no strategy other than race to the airport and evacuate as many people as you can.”

In fact, there is a strategy, but not one that Mr. Biden can easily sell amid the images of chaos in Kabul. To his mind, years of refashioning American foreign policy in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks gave China room to rise, Russia room to disrupt, Iran and North Korea room to focus on their nuclear ambitions. Getting out of Afghanistan is part of a broader effort to refocus on core strategic challenges, and new threats from cyberspace to outer space. But this weekend was evidence that the past is never really in the past.
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Demonstrators near the White House in Lafayette Square on Sunday.
Demonstrators near the White House in Lafayette Square on Sunday.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

The administration’s defense against the criticism of its failure to move fast enough in Afghanistan has been to acknowledge it was taken by surprise by the speed of the collapse, but to insist there were plans in place. The Pentagon press secretary, John F. Kirby, said that a rehearsal of the evacuation effort “was held as far back as May,” and that Marines based on Iwo Jima were positioned to fly to Kabul.

“The reason why we have responded quickly in the past few days is because we were ready for this contingency,” Mr. Kirby said.

But Mr. Biden’s own words make clear he was confident this day would not come for a long time, if ever. He repeatedly said he had “no regrets” about his decision, and would bear no responsibility if the Taliban took over, in part because Mr. Trump had signed the deal in February 2020 that set a May 1, 2021, date for complete American withdrawal. (Although Mr. Biden extended the withdrawal date to Sept. 11, almost all American troops were gone by early July.)

The result of the Trump-Taliban accord, Mr. Biden said Saturday, was that he was left facing a Taliban force “in the strongest position militarily since 2001,” and a date by which all American forces had to be out.

Mr. Blinken stepped around questions on Sunday about why more was not done earlier to get Afghan interpreters for the U.S. military and other allies at risk of Taliban retaliation out of the country. He was also asked why more Americans were not moved earlier out of the embassy in Kabul, as many at the Pentagon had urged, before the scale of the collapse became apparent.
Image
Even many of President Biden’s allies who believe he made the right decision to finally exit a war that the United States could not win concede he made a series of major mistakes in executing the withdrawal.
Even many of President Biden’s allies who believe he made the right decision to finally exit a war that the United States could not win concede he made a series of major mistakes in executing the withdrawal.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

“The inability of Afghan security forces to defend their country has played a very powerful role,” Mr. Blinken said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

All true. But it is Mr. Biden who may be remembered for his role in wildly overestimating the strength of the Afghan forces, and not moving fast enough when it became clear the scenarios he had been presented with were wrong.
The Fall of Kabul
Kabul’s Sudden Fall to Taliban Ends U.S. Era in Afghanistan
Aug. 15, 2021
Taliban Sweep in Afghanistan Follows Years of U.S. Miscalculations
Aug. 14, 2021
Taliban Capture Strategic Cities as Biden Speeds Troop Deployment to Afghanistan
Aug. 14, 2021

David E. Sanger is a White House and national security correspondent. In a 38-year reporting career for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.” @SangerNYT • Facebook
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 16, 2021, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: For Biden, Images He Wanted to Avoid. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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Otto Weininger

Ούτε ένα χρόνο δεν θα τον αφήσουν τον μπάρμπα Τζο.

Harris says she had key role in Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal decision

The vice president confirmed she was the last person in the room before Biden made the decision to move forward with withdrawing U.S. troops.

Vice President Kamala Harris confirmed Sunday that she was the last person in the room before President Joe Biden made the decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” Harris was asked about being the last person in the room regarding major decisions, something that Biden has said is important to him in his working relationship with the vice president. Harris confirmed that was the case regarding the move to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11.

The decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan was announced earlier this month. American troops have been in Afghanistan since October 2001, when the U.S. invaded in response to the 9/11 attacks the previous month.

“This is a president who has an extraordinary amount of courage,” she said, regarding the decision. “He is someone, who I have seen over and over again, make decisions based on what he truly believes ... is the right thing to do.”

Harris said that Biden “is acutely aware that it may not be politically popular, or advantageous for him personally; it’s really something to see.”

“I have seen him over and over again make decisions based exactly on what he believes is right,” she noted.


https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/2 ... ion-484581

[Orion22]

Spoiler

Aν τα γυρνάει και η & η PRAVDA των πασόκων...


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/us/p ... ticleShare

Otto Weininger

Ούτε ένα χρόνο δεν θα τον αφήσουν τον μπάρμπα Τζο.

Harris says she had key role in Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal decision

The vice president confirmed she was the last person in the room before Biden made the decision to move forward with withdrawing U.S. troops.

Vice President Kamala Harris confirmed Sunday that she was the last person in the room before President Joe Biden made the decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” Harris was asked about being the last person in the room regarding major decisions, something that Biden has said is important to him in his working relationship with the vice president. Harris confirmed that was the case regarding the move to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11.

The decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan was announced earlier this month. American troops have been in Afghanistan since October 2001, when the U.S. invaded in response to the 9/11 attacks the previous month.

“This is a president who has an extraordinary amount of courage,” she said, regarding the decision. “He is someone, who I have seen over and over again, make decisions based on what he truly believes ... is the right thing to do.”

Harris said that Biden “is acutely aware that it may not be politically popular, or advantageous for him personally; it’s really something to see.”

“I have seen him over and over again make decisions based exactly on what he believes is right,” she noted.


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At first she was like: ^
but then she was like: https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status ... 4880368641


Der ewige PASOKA

[Lugozzi]

Διακόπτει τις διακοπές του ο Μπάιντεν
Διάγγελμα στις 22:45

[Imperium]

Harris says she had key role in Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal decision

The vice president confirmed she was the last person in the room before Biden made the decision to move forward with withdrawing U.S. troops.

Vice President Kamala Harris confirmed Sunday that she was the last person in the room before President Joe Biden made the decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” Harris was asked about being the last person in the room regarding major decisions, something that Biden has said is important to him in his working relationship with the vice president. Harris confirmed that was the case regarding the move to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11.

The decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan was announced earlier this month. American troops have been in Afghanistan since October 2001, when the U.S. invaded in response to the 9/11 attacks the previous month.

“This is a president who has an extraordinary amount of courage,” she said, regarding the decision. “He is someone, who I have seen over and over again, make decisions based on what he truly believes ... is the right thing to do.”

Harris said that Biden “is acutely aware that it may not be politically popular, or advantageous for him personally; it’s really something to see.”

“I have seen him over and over again make decisions based exactly on what he believes is right,” she noted.


https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/2 ... ion-484581

At first she was like: ^
but then she was like: https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status ... 4880368641


Der ewige PASOKA

Καιρός ήταν να στριμωχτεί η καριόλα, που το έπαιζε και δικαιώματα των γυναικών.

Ακόμα δεν έχουν καταλάβει καλά-καλά οι χιονονιφάδες τι νίλα έπαθαν.

[Lugozzi]

Ούτε ένα χρόνο δεν θα τον αφήσουν τον μπάρμπα Τζο.

Harris says she had key role in Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal decision

The vice president confirmed she was the last person in the room before Biden made the decision to move forward with withdrawing U.S. troops.

Vice President Kamala Harris confirmed Sunday that she was the last person in the room before President Joe Biden made the decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” Harris was asked about being the last person in the room regarding major decisions, something that Biden has said is important to him in his working relationship with the vice president. Harris confirmed that was the case regarding the move to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11.

The decision to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan was announced earlier this month. American troops have been in Afghanistan since October 2001, when the U.S. invaded in response to the 9/11 attacks the previous month.

“This is a president who has an extraordinary amount of courage,” she said, regarding the decision. “He is someone, who I have seen over and over again, make decisions based on what he truly believes ... is the right thing to do.”

Harris said that Biden “is acutely aware that it may not be politically popular, or advantageous for him personally; it’s really something to see.”

“I have seen him over and over again make decisions based exactly on what he believes is right,” she noted.


https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/2 ... ion-484581

At first she was like: ^
but then she was like: https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status ... 4880368641


Der ewige PASOKA