Subject: Re: ‘Going To Get Worse’
bighairymike: And Biden, despite knowing better from his decades of foreign policy experience, was powerless to alter that time line.

Read the Doha Agreement. When Trump left office he had drawn down U.S. troop levels to 2,500 troops -- the lowest number of troops in Afghanistan since 2001 and had turned over half of Afghanistan to the Taliban, arranging for the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters from prisons there. Trump bragged about boxing Biden in with the drawdowns and the "Surrender Agreement."

Biden, who was not given any of the Trump withdrawal plans during the presidential transition -- remember, Trump originally wanted all U.S. troops out by Jan. 22 -- Biden asked his intelligence professionals if it was feasible to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan and both defend them against a renewed Taliban onslaught and maintain a degree of stability in the country. The assessment from those intelligence professionals was that the United States would need to send more American troops into harm’s way to ensure our troops could defend themselves and to stop the stalemate from getting worse.

In short, like most of what Trump did as president, it was a clusterfcuk. Biden got a few more months for the withdrawal but his hands were pretty much tied by what Trump had put in place with the Surrender Agreement and his troop drawdowns.


bighairymike: And AFAIK, Trumps plan did not call for abandoning weapons worth billions of dollars for capture by our adversaries.

Yeah, it did. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley told Trump the U.S. would be leaving equipment behind for two reasons: one, it was less expensive than shipping it home; and two, much of the equipment was obsolete, some of it dating back to 2005. Trump talked about it at his rallies.

American troops scrapped unwanted gear and disabled Humvees and aircraft so they couldn’t be used again before leaving. SOP.

You are a good little cultist, though.