State Dept. Finally Admits Biden Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal

Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin - You still seem to imply I'm blaming Trump for anything there. Your the one who thinks it is bad. I only brought up Trump to point out doing it in the first place was bi partisan. If you see somewhere that I blamed Trump for doing anything bad in relation to the Afghanistan withdrawal on this thread, please quote it.

1) Japan had its leader left in place because he was the continuity the people cared about. Had we not done that, we may very well of had an insurgency in the name of the emporer there too.
2) It doesn't matter why we would change out the government of South Korea, continuity remained and we had no local insurgency.
3) Once again you miss the entire point behind continuity of leadership and leaving in place a leadership the people will accept what that means for the likelihood of an insurgency.

We can have different opinions on why there was no insurgency in those three cases, but the fact remains that there was not to any significant degree. This is in stark contrast to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. As such the cost of doing as you suggest was very different in those three cases than it was in the successful cases you want to hold up. Afghanistan had much more in common with the situation in Vietnam than it ever did with Japan, Germany or South Korea.

You are blaming him. Whether you believe the withdrawal was a good or bad idea, you are adding him to the mix of having orchestrated the plan to execute it. I will argue that it wasn't a good idea in the first place, but it was also executed in the worst way, costing more American lives in the process. But the execution is not Trump's responsibility as he did not give the order, nor do we know if he would have gone through it or modified the plan had he continued his term. I don't know about you, but when I have a plan handed to me from another person, especially one I am diametrically opposed to, I review it, challenge it, revise it to meet my objectives, and take responsibility for it. So yes, by stating "It was planned and agreed on by the Trump administration and Trump's agreement executed by the Biden administration. It was the right move. The execution wasn't awesome," you are implying it was Trump's fault for the not so "awesome" execution. So not only was it not the right move, which became obvious after the Taliban regained control shortly after (when Biden stated he believed this would not happen), Biden

Going back to history...
1. Japan's leader was left in place as a symbol. He no longer had any authority under the additions to the constitution. That is by definition a major change to the makeup of the Japanese government.
2. We didn't change out the government of S Korea, we helped facilitated it as they became a new nation. That government continued at the end of the Korean war.
3. You are conflating the administrative side of government with the formal leadership of Germany. All of the major players and those who inspired a dominant Nazi Germany were moved out, placed in jail, and/or escaped on their own. The allies militaries continued to occupy Germany through 1955 and the first post WWII Chancellor was not a Nazi. Furthermore, the Christian Democrats emerged as the dominant party in Germany. In order to not rehash the past and allow division to fester again (as it did after WWI), Germany granted amnesty to many of those who were part of the Nazi party, allowing them to continue being a part of the nation.

I can draw up just as many similarities and differences to each of the wars we've named. Insurgencies happen and are typically bolstered when it affects the government's will to commit. As I said, we committed in WWII and Korea, both in presence and messaging to the world. For Afghanistan elected officials allowed the conversation to question our role there in the first place, call the objective "too hard", and ultimately give up.

Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin - You continue to ignore the base difference and just want to argue about why the base difference happened. It doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is that in the three instances you brought up as successes there were no local insurgencies of significance. In the three failures, including Afghanistan, there were.

As far as you trying to tell me what I mean by what I said about Trump, well the old joke about a person trying to argue with the author about what their book is trying to say comes to mind.

In those three instances the war was over and done with, in the minds of the enemy. That wasn't the case with Afghanistan. We were still fighting the previous government.