Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members
The only major fuckup was the failure of student loan debt cancellation, and the pullout from Afghanistan. But arguably the latter wasn’t his fault, as it had been put in place before he was in office.
Military-wise, the pullout of Afghanistan was a huge success. The Russians lost 535, the British lost 16,000. On top of it the United States evacuated 250,000+ civilians in 3 weeks who were never part of the pull-out. Many think of it as a failure but it was the largest humanitarian airlift effort in human history. If there was a fuckup it occurred in 2020 when Trump told the Taliban they can have Afghanistan. That is where everything fell to pieces.
Well, not to mention, Afghanistan had a few other knock-on effects on the, um, former Soviet Union.
During my government-paid vacation to Afghanistan, those we fought against were mostly Iranian or Pakastani, not actual Afghani people. If we did run into an Afghani it was usually a teenager. Given I was there in 2008 and 2012 and not in 2020, the feeling that any pull-out would be messy was already present. The locals didn’t believe we would ever leave, we told them in 2012 we didn’t think we were the right culture to help them out of the darkness and that we wouldn’t stay forever. The United States never invested in Afghanistan, Congress blocked all grain shipments despite military intelligence showing it would result in farmers growing opium. I know for many Americans the only view of the nation was war images, but those of us on the ground saw more than that. The Afghani culture is really cool, they are the best horsemen I have ever seen, deeply caring and understanding. They also are a broken people who don’t view themselves as a nation but as tribes of people. In the end those I met and spoke to were very interested in western culture and we fostered a great relationship. The largest problem they faced was foreigners from the West and South bringing war to their villages and forcing their strict religious rules on them.
I do believe that Afghanistan will never recover, India or China are going to exploit the nation for it’s resources and leave nothing for the people there. Maybe either of those nations will run the Taliban out, but it won’t be anytime soon.
That’s an interesting perspective, thanks for sharing it.
It’s only my perspective from what I saw around the Parwan Province of Afghanistan.
If there’s one thing the US will do, it’s get you hooked on drugs. You can be an army vet or a small country and it’s just the same.
That, and stabbing the rail workers union in the back.
Actually, most of them ended up getting their sick days anyway in the end, due to the combined efforts of Biden and Bernie: http://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
Holy shit, I guess I missed that news because of the reddit debacle. That’s fabulous news.