To be honest, I’m having trouble reading any analysis of the withdrawal from Afghanistan because I know it’s going to be slanted, distorted, and even out and out dishonest. It’s bad enough from the right that I don’t even trust lefty Professor Richardson. No particular example other than she sounds … ah … reasonable. Which means this is an emotional reaction on my part. I actually generally figure Richardson to be about as fair and accurate as can be, as she’s a historian by trade, trained to evaluate fairly – although historians are notorious for viewing history through their own prisms of biases. But I still am extremely wary of groupthink.
But there’s a difference between that and, say, what Erick Erickson, the Limbaugh replacement, is peddling. Consider this:
Also, had the Biden administration done a better job, it would have been preventable. That’s the most important thing to note here, is that so much of this could have been prevented because all Joe Biden had to do was nothing. All he had to do was nothing. In fact, H.R. McMaster was on CNN earlier today. They were essentially asking him to call out Donald Trump and blame Donald Trump. And what H.R. McMaster said was, in fact, no one bound the Biden administration to this. No one required the Biden administration to maintain what Donald Trump did.
This is not hard, Erickson.
- Former President Trump essentially promised the Taliban their prize if only they’d stop killing Americans. This wasn’t so much Trump fulfilling a pledge as him, in his usual clumsy way, setting up a trap for Biden in case he won.
- So the Taliban, seeing the grapes dangling in front of them, did so.
- Biden beats Trump.
- If Biden had reneged on the deal, the conflict resumes. Obviously, obviously, obviously. Americans dying and we’re stuck in a quagmire, and we’d damage American reputation and be stuck in a war that Biden’s been against.
- So Biden did the adult thing: he grasped the nettle as best he could. Keep in mind that it was Trump who requested the Afghan government release thousands of Taliban prisoners, and it was Trump who reduced American troop numbers to 2500; the latter is important because if he increases the numbers, then the Taliban have reason to suspect American malfeasance.
None of this is hard. This is all straightforward.
Erickson, for all his piousness, is little more than a propagandist.
And I’m avoiding reading either side with regards to this conflict. I honor and mourn our fallen.
