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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2021 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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Well said.
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PUBLISHED: August 27, 2021 at 5:25 a.m. | UPDATED: August 27, 2021 at 5:39 a.m.
In 2005, my colleagues at The American Prospect, Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias, wrote an essay I think about often. It was called “The Incompetence Dodge,” and it argued that American policymakers and pundits routinely try to rescue the reputation of bad ideas by attributing their failure to poor execution. At the time, they were writing about the liberal hawks who were blaming the catastrophe of the Iraq War on the Bush administration’s maladministration rather than rethinking the enterprise in its totality. But the same dynamic suffuses the recriminations over the Afghanistan withdrawal.
To state the obvious: There was no good way to lose Afghanistan to the Taliban. A better withdrawal was possible — and our stingy, chaotic visa process was unforgivable — but so was a worse one. Either way, there was no hope of an end to the war that didn’t reveal our decades of folly, no matter how deeply America’s belief in its own enduring innocence demanded one. That is the reckoning that lies beneath events that are still unfolding, and much of the cable news conversation is a frenzied, bipartisan effort to avoid it.
Focusing on the execution of the withdrawal is giving virtually everyone who insisted we could remake Afghanistan the opportunity to obscure their failures by pretending to believe in the possibility of a graceful departure. It’s also obscuring the true alternative to withdrawal: endless occupation. But what our ignominious exit really reflects is the failure of America’s foreign policy establishment at both prediction and policymaking in Afghanistan.
“The pro-war crowd sees this as a mechanism by which they can absolve themselves of an accounting for the last 20 years,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told me. “Just think about the epic size of this policy failure. Twenty years of training. More than $2 trillion worth of expenditure. For almost nothing. It is heartbreaking to watch these images but it is equally heartbreaking to think about all of the effort, of lives, and money, we wasted in pursuit of a goal that was illusory.”
Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, phrased it well. “There’s no denying America is the most powerful country in the world, but what we’ve seen over and over in recent decades is we cannot turn that into the outcomes we want. Whether it’s Afghanistan or Libya or sanctions on Russia and Venezuela, we don’t get the policy outcomes we want, and I think that’s because we overreach — we assume that because we are very powerful, we can achieve things that are unachievable.”
I will not pretend that I know how we should have left Afghanistan. But neither do a lot of people dominating the airwaves right now. And the confident pronouncements to the contrary over the past two weeks leave me worried that America has learned little. We are still holding not just to the illusion of our control, but to the illusion of our knowledge.
“Look at the countries in which the war on terror has been waged,” Ben Rhodes, who served as a top foreign policy adviser to President Barack Obama, told me. “Afghanistan. Iraq. Yemen. Somalia. Libya. Every one of those countries is worse off today in some fashion. The evidentiary basis for the idea that American military intervention leads inexorably to improved material circumstances is simply not there.”
My heart breaks for the suffering we will leave behind in Afghanistan. But we do not know how to fix Afghanistan. We failed in that effort so completely that we ended up strengthening the Taliban. We should do all we can to bring American citizens and allies home. But if we truly care about educating girls worldwide, we know how to build schools and finance education. If we truly care about protecting those who fear tyranny, we know how to issue visas and admit refugees. If we truly care about the suffering of others, there is so much we could do. Only 1% of the residents of poor countries are vaccinated against the coronavirus. We could change that. More than 400,000 people die from malaria each year. We could change that, too.
“I want America more forward-deployed, but I want it through a massive international financing arm and a massive renewable energy arm,” Murphy told me. “That’s the United States I want to see spread across the world — not the face of America today that’s by and large arms sales, military trainers and brigades.”
The choice we face is not between isolationism and militarism. We are not powerful enough to achieve the unachievable. But we are powerful enough to do far more good, and far less harm, than we do now.
Ezra Klein is a New York Times columnist. |
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MalibuGuru
Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9300
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real-human
Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14883
Location: on earth
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| Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 9:36 am Post subject: |
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lets face it again Afghanistan long invasion was over fuel. this does not include Iraq. 6.5 trillion dollars. Many years ago i calculated if the usa spent the intial 1 - 2 trillion on solar concentrating plants at post research low volume costs every family in the USA would not pay a penny for electricity for 20-50 years the life of the plants. Can you imagine if our companies had free electricity the competitive advantage they would have when just afganistan is now looking at 6.5 trillion.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-will-be-paying-for-the-cost-of-the-war-in-afghanistan-for-decades-11630071934?siteid=yhoof2
Why Americans will be paying for the cost of the war in Afghanistan for decades
| Quote: | This week we’re talking about philanthropy in the form of loans and student-debt relief for members of the military who served in harm’s way. But first up, interest payments on the post-9/11 wars.
The nation largely financed the post-9/11 wars through debt
The bombings at the Kabul airport this week, which killed 13 American troops, are a stark reminder of the human toll of the Afghanistan war. And even if President Joe Biden meets a deadline to pull U.S. troops out of the country by Aug. 31, Americans will likely be paying the financial cost of the war for decades to come.
That’s because the nation largely financed the post-9/11 wars through debt, according to an analysis by the Costs of War project, an initiative from scholars at Brown University and Boston University. Taxpayers have already spent $925 billion in interest payments related to those wars, the analysis found.
The analysis estimates — had America pulled out last year — that the cost of the interest on the Afghanistan war debts could grow to $2 trillion by 2030 and to $6.5 trillion by 2050.
‘There are all these various costs that don’t get talked about when the American public hears about how expensive the war is.’— Heidi Peltier, the author of the analysis and the project director of the Costs of War Project at Boston University
“There are all these various costs that don’t get talked about when the American public hears about how expensive the war is,” said Heidi Peltier, the author of the analysis and the project director of the Costs of War Project at Boston University. “One of those is the interest costs.”
That we’re paying interest on our war spending is a political choice. The bulk of the wars over the last century were funded in large part by tax increases and war bonds, the analysis notes. But as the U.S. entered these wars in the early 2000s, the Bush administration actually cut taxes. That meant funding for the wars had to come from another source, in this case financing.
This approach shields “the public from knowing what the true cost of the war is because they’re not feeling the pinch now,” Peltier said. “That displaces the cost to future taxpayers.”
Debt relief for service members after a long wait
One group of Americans that has disproportionately shouldered the cost of war will get some financial relief they’ve been entitled to for years.
More than 47,000 current or former active duty service members will see the interest on their federal student loans waived retroactively, the Department of Education announced last week. Members of the military deployed to areas that put them in imminent danger have had the right to have the interest waived on their student loans for years, but only a small fraction have actually accessed that benefit.
In 2019, the Department waived interest on loans for just 4,800 servicemembers, the agency noted in its announcement. Now through a data matching agreement with the Department of Defense, the Department of Education can identify borrowers eligible for the benefit and automatically waive their interest.
More than 47,000 current or former active duty service members will see the interest on their federal student loans waived retroactively.
Though the relief will be a boon for servicemembers it comes after years of borrowers struggling to access it. Between 2008 and 2014, when thousands of soldiers were serving their country in harm’s way during the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, just 633 borrowers had their interest waived, Kay Hagan, a former Democratic senator representing North Carolina noted in 2014.
“This is a critically important benefit which recognized, on top of the other military consumer protections, that if you were deployed to some of the most dangerous places in the world, we shouldn’t let the interest accrue on your student loans,” said Seth Frotman, the executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center. “For nearly a decade that promise was illusory.”
Frotman, who worked as a senior advisor to Holly Patraeus, assistant director for servicemember affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and later as the CFPB’s student loan ombudsman, has been advocating for the interest benefit to be automated for years.
He pointed to red tape and missteps by student-loan servicers — who have been accused of making it harder than necessary for borrowers to access benefits they’re entitled to — as the reasons why such a low number of servicemembers had their interest waived previously.
The challenges servicemembers and veterans face accessing consumer protections can often serve as a warning sign for broader issues in a market. That service members paid interest they didn’t owe for years is one indication of the challenges student-loan borrowers broadly face accessing relief they’re entitled to.
For example, public servants, including service members and veterans, have struggled to have their loans cancelled under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which allows borrowers to have their federal student loans discharged after 10 years of payments. |
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when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:05 pm Post subject: |
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And then there is xenophobia, so shamefully displayed here and in Congress.
Nevertheless, 116,700 have been evacuated. I challenge any of the righties here to lay out factually what the Trump administration did when the Taliban didn't meet the terms of the Trump agreement to withdraw by May 1.
| Quote: | Some of the Republican House members who this week excoriated President Joe Biden's strategy to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and evacuate Afghan civilians voted last month against legislation to speed up the visa application process for Afghan citizens.
The House overwhelmingly passed a bill to make it easier for Afghans who assisted the American military to relocate to the U.S. The Averting Loss of Life and Injury by Expediting SIVs Act (ALLIES) Act was approved by a 407-16 vote on July 22. The 16 "no" votes were all from Republicans. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 12:49 pm Post subject: |
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Fairly even-handed.
| Quote: | WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump’s administration signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020, he optimistically proclaimed that “we think we’ll be successful in the end.” His secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, asserted that the administration was “seizing the best opportunity for peace in a generation.”
Eighteen months later, President Joe Biden is pointing to the agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, as he tries to deflect blame for the Taliban overrunning Afghanistan in a blitz. He says it bound him to withdraw U.S. troops, setting the stage for the chaos engulfing the country.
But Biden can go only so far in claiming the agreement boxed him in. It had an escape clause: The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed. They did, but Biden chose to stay in it, although he delayed the complete pullout from May to September.
Chris Miller, acting defense secretary in the final months of the Trump administration, chafed at the idea that Biden was handcuffed by the agreement.
“If he thought the deal was bad, he could have renegotiated. He had plenty of opportunity to do that if he so desired,” Miller, a top Pentagon counterterrorism official at the time the Doha deal was signed, said in an interview.
Renegotiating, though, would have been difficult. Biden would have had little leverage. He, like Trump, wanted U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. Pulling out of the agreement might have forced him to send thousands more back in.
He made that point Monday, saying in a televised address from the White House that he would not commit to sending more American troops to fight for Afghanistan’s future while also harkening back to the Trump deal to suggest that the withdrawal path was predetermined by his predecessor.
“The choice I had to make, as your president, was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season,” Biden said.
The Taliban takeover, far swifter than officials from either administration had envisioned, has prompted questions from even some Trump-era officials about whether the terms and conditions of the deal — and the decisions that followed after — did enough to protect Afghanistan once the U.S. military pulled out.
The historic deal was always high-wire diplomacy, requiring a degree of trust in the Taliban as a potential peace partner and inked despite skepticism from war-weary Afghans who feared losing authority in any power-sharing agreement.
“The Doha agreement was a very weak agreement, and the U.S. should have gained more concessions from the Taliban,” said Lisa Curtis, an Afghanistan expert who served during the Trump administration as the National Security Council’s senior director for South and Central Asia.
She called it “wishful thinking” to believe that the Taliban might be interested in lasting peace. The resulting agreement, she said, was heavily weighted toward the Taliban, contributed to undermining Afghan President Ashraf Ghani — he fled the country Sunday and is now in the United Arab Emirates — and facilitated the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners without a commensurate concession from the Taliban.
“They wanted U.S. forces out, and they wanted to take over the country militarily, and they believed that they could do that,” Curtis said of the Taliban. “That was just crystal clear.”
The agreement called for the U.S. to bring down its forces to 8,600 from 13,000 over the following three to four months, with the remaining U.S. forces withdrawing in 14 months, or by May 1.
Biden, in an ABC interview that aired Thursday, said he was confronted with that deadline soon after taking office: “Do I say we’re staying? And do you think we would not have to put a hell of a lot more troops?” Even without Trump’s deal, Biden said he “would’ve tried to figure out how to withdraw those troops” and that “there is no good time to leave Afghanistan.”
The agreement stipulated commitments the Taliban were expected to make to prevent terrorism, including obligations to renounce al-Qaida and prevent that group or others from using Afghan soil to plot attacks on the U.S. or its allies. Though the agreement bound the Taliban to halt attacks on U.S. and coalition forces, it did not explicitly require them to expel al-Qaida or to stop attacks on the Afghan military.
The agreement provided significant legitimacy to the Taliban, whose leaders met with Pompeo, the first secretary of state to have such interactions. There were also discussions of them coming to the U.S. to meet with Trump.
Stlll, Trump spoke cautiously about the deal’s prospects for success, warning of military firepower if “bad things happen.” Pompeo similarly said the U.S. was “realistic” and “restrained,” determined to avoid endless wars.
U.S. officials made clear at the time that the agreement was conditions-based and the failure of intra-Afghan peace talks to reach a negotiated settlement would have nullified the requirement to withdraw.
One day before the Doha deal, a top aide to chief U.S. negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad said the agreement was not irreversible, and “there is no obligation for the United States to withdraw troops if the Afghan parties are unable to reach agreement or if the Taliban show bad faith” during negotiations.
Those negotiations were intended to begin within a month of the deal being signed but were delayed amid disputes between the Taliban and the Afghan government over prisoner releases. Amid fits and starts, the negotiations had not produced any outcome by the time Biden announced his withdrawal decision in April. Nor have they done so since.
Miller said it was the “right approach” and necessary to force Ghani into negotiations. He said the Doha deal was always supposed to be “phase one” of the process, with the next part being the U.S. using its leverage to have Ghani negotiate on a power-sharing deal with the Taliban.
“Obviously, he was not jazzed by that, but he was going to do it — or he was going to be removed,” Miller said. “We were going to put some serious pressure on him to make him cut a deal with the Taliban.”
In hindsight, though, said Curtis, the U.S. should not have entered the Doha talks “unless we were prepared to represent the Afghan government’s interests. It was an unfair negotiation, because nobody was looking out for the interests of the Afghan government.” |
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MalibuGuru
Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9300
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| Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 10:02 am Post subject: |
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| Twitter banned a grieving mother because of this post |
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boggsman1
Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9120
Location: at a computer
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| Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 11:21 am Post subject: |
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| Rightfully so Steve. Most of the post is total Bullshit. Did Reagan have "blood on his hands" when 243 Marines were slaughtered in cold blood in 1983? After countless State Department warnings. |
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mrgybe
Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180
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| Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Boggsy, You should be ashamed of yourself. You sneeringly dismiss the grief stricken venting from a broken-hearted mother as “total bullshit” and support taking away her ability to express her grief. Perhaps your blind obeisance to Biden would wilt a little if it was your son |
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boggsman1
Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9120
Location: at a computer
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| Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 1:18 pm Post subject: |
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I knew you'd jump. You should be blasting Steve for using the tweet to score a political point. Mr. Gybe, in the olden days, a grieving parent of a fallen soldier wouldn't inject a blatant lie concerning the election as part of her message to the president, but here we are. Sorry, I'm not buying the snake oil you're selling.
And I'll add that her commentary that Biden is not the president , and that Trump should be seated in his rightful spot is quite dangerous, and the lie has cost people their lives. It might be a joke to you, but it's quite infuriating to the rest of us. |
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mrgybe
Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180
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| Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:48 pm Post subject: |
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| I repeat, you should be ashamed of yourself. Your professed liberal compassion is in short supply when observing those you hold in contempt. |
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