Disaster

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

Mike Pompeo met with Taliban Head of the Political Office Mullah Beradar on September 12, 2020 and November 21, 2020

Beradar is now set to become the new President of Afghanistan.

President Trump had Beradar released from a Pakistani prison in 2018.

In February 2020, the USA government without the Afghanistan government being present, committed them to release 5000 Taliban prisoners. Eventually the Ghani government did and watched them go back into the fight against the people who released them.

The demise of the Afghan government started the first day we sat down with the Taliban and excluded the Afghan government.

And surprise the Russians are not leaving their embassy. I wonder why they feel so confident of safety in Afghanistan of all places?
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

And it's Trump's fault.

Originally Posted by spence

A lot of blame to go around. We definitely should have had a stronger ready presence to ensure Americans could get out safely. Sounds like a lot are still there. Afghanistan needs to decide what they want to look like in the future, not the West.

True. AFG needed to fight for their own future.

We should not have closed Baghram until the end. We should have kept the aviation support and intel running, both critical to what part of ANA was fighting.