Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

How can you be so completely full of shit so consistently?

Trump wanted us out of there before the election and he was fine with Biden's decision.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-could-gain-biden-s-decision-delay-withdrawing-afghanistan-ncna1263956

April 13, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

By Richard Hanania, research fellow at Defense Priorities

President Joe Biden is reportedly set to announce that U.S. troops will be out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11, breaking the agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban promising a complete withdrawal by May 1.


Are you a little chaffed back there, I mean with how much you pull out of your ass?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/trump-wants-pull-all-troops-out-afghanistan-2020-election-n1038651

Trump wants to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by 2020 election, officials say


The president threatened to shut down the U.S. embassy in Kabul last December, complaining to aides that it is too large and expensive, officials said.


Trump vows to draw down troops in Afghanistan
Aug. 2, 2019 / 01:04


Aug. 2, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC / Updated Aug. 2, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

By Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee


WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has told his advisers that he wants to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by the November 2020 presidential election, according to five current and former administration and military officials.

The president's advisers are now scrambling to meet his election-year deadline, which has exacerbated tensions between officials at the Pentagon and the State Department over the timing of withdrawal and whether it should be completed, the officials said.

"It's tense," said one former official briefed on the debate.

Trump on troops in Afghanistan: 'I'm not looking to kill 10 million people'
Aug. 3, 2019

Last December Trump threatened not only to immediately withdraw all troops from Afghanistan but also to shut down the U.S. embassy in Kabul, complaining to aides that it is too large and expensive, according to officials. The president's threat to close the U.S. embassy — which has not been previously reported — so alarmed administration and military officials that they quickly offered him a plan to move up the timing of efforts to scale back the size of the embassy staff, officials said.

"He was fed up with hearing that the U.S. was not winning there," one former U.S. defense official said. "It was no secret he wanted out, but deciding to pull out of the embassy, too, was a shock."

But Trump argued that without a military presence U.S. embassy staff could be in danger, so it should be closed, the officials said. He also said it was time for the U.S. to get out of the war there otherwise it could bankrupt the U.S. like it did Russia in the 1980s, the two former defense officials said.

A Pentagon spokesman said the department doesn't comment on military planning. The American troop presence in Afghanistan is conditions-based, the spokesman added.

Trump, when asked to specify how many troops will be pulled out of Afghanistan, said Friday: "We're reducing it. We've been there for 19 years. We're really serving as policemen. We could win Afghanistan in two days or three days or four days if we wanted, but I'm not looking to kill 10 million people."

Trump, who promised during his 2016 campaign to end wars like the one in Afghanistan, has expressed frustration since his early days in office with a lack of progress there. Those frustrations boiled over late last year after the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford suggested in November 2018 that the war wasn't going well.

In response to a question about whether the Taliban is winning in Afghanistan, Dunford replied: "They are not losing right now."

Over the next few weeks, Trump vented to aides that he had given in to increasing the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan in August 2017, and if they couldn't win by now it was time to get every American out, including at the embassy.

Just days before Christmas, the president gave the directive for the immediate removal of 7,000 U.S. troops, roughly half of the total number in Afghanistan, and for the remaining 7,000 to be out over a matter of months, the former defense officials said.

The president's aides convinced him to backtrack on his directive to immediately begin troop withdrawal, promising an eventual Afghan peace deal that would achieve a drawdown. And in the following months the State Department began a so-called "right-sizing" exercise to cut the embassy staff by as much as half, according to a congressional staffer. It's expected to be complete by the end of September.