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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   24304 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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I think it is reasonable to presume that Biden knew that he was effectively signing over Afghanistan to the Taliban when he had the coalition troops leave, but was doing it anyway because he believed it was the right thing to do (which I concur on).

It's hard to say what Biden's actual beliefs on the matter were as the withdrawal agreement and the details of it were hashed out by the previous administration in 2020. Biden was stuck to a May 2021 withdrawal deadline, just a few months into his term, which they extended but it's not like he could just ignore the deal either, as most of the withdrawal had already occured before inauguration with 80% of troops pulled.

By January 2021, just 2,500 U.S. troops remained in the country,

A lot of the military bases in the area were already closed down, allied nations had their own plans to withdraw already drawn up, it was a whole clusterfuck that got inherited.

Ok, I might have used Biden as a stand-in for DC more generally. (I do not think it was a signature Trump policy though, more like "in his first term there were still plenty of things running normally".)

I still think that the intelligence community had a rather good idea that if the US were to pull out, Kabul would fall to the Taliban rather sooner than later. Probably there is a heart-warming story of some small CIA analysist trying to warn the administration that the Afghan army will collapse immediately, and being confused at getting stonewalled.

Basically the problem is that the post major conflict state building is delegated to the State Department. They have been consistently unable to build functional states. They are too egotistical to admit this. They are too powerful for anyone else in government to say it.

So the strategy has been to tell the WH that things are going great and the US should be able to withdraw in a year or so. As that deadline approaches, senior DOS people call a panicked evening meeting with POTUS and insist that due to unforeseen complications things will need to be pushed back another year. Meanwhile they never even started planning the withdrawal.

With Biden either due to his health or stubbornness they couldn't get the panicked evening meeting. So they ended up having to execute a withdrawal they didn't actually even start planning.

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