STATEMENT FROM CHAIRMAN MENENDEZ FOLLOWING CLASSIFIED COMMITTEE BRIEFING ON AFGHANISTAN

[Rustyeye77]

“I very much appreciated the Administration’s willingness to provide our Committee with unvarnished facts about the future of U.S.-Afghan policy after a war that has gone on for a very long time and at great sacrifice by U.S. service members, our diplomats, and aid workers
.

“I share the President’s desire to get our troops out of Afghanistan, but I continue to have concerns about our ability to protect the hard fought gains made for the rights of Afghan women and minorities, as well as our confidence level that Afghanistan will not again become a haven for terrorists. How we withdraw and what political arrangement is left in our wake is critically important.

“Now that the President has made this decision, we need to come together to focus on the implications and chart a path forward that ensures we are not forced to send our troops back. As a follow-up to today’s briefing, I will convene a full committee hearing in the coming weeks to further examine in an open setting the implications of a withdrawal for U.S. national security interests in the region, a full accounting of the diplomatic and development tools we have to pursue our interests, and what it will mean for the people of Afghanistan.”

https://www.menendez.senate.gov/newsroom/press/statement-from-chairman-menendez-following-classified-committee-briefing-on-afghanistan

[Rustyeye77]

1. 100 Views in ! minute and 52 seconds

and not one post.

[A HERETIC I AM]

41. You should know by now that sort of thing happens all the time.

Sometimes a thread will sit for 20 minutes before the first post, and then it gets 200 responses.

[cilla4progress]

2. Oh FFS.

So, nothing.

My Afghan exchange daughter who self-deported to Canada has family left there - sisters and nieces and family.

This does nothing to help in the immediate crisis.

[Rustyeye77]

3. Ok..what do YOU want to happen?

[cilla4progress]

4. Really, like

I can solve this??!!

Get real.

Our exit suffers from a failure of imagination - like so much else in this over-privileged insulated country.

Our time will come.

[Rustyeye77]

5. I think we agree.

[cilla4progress]

6. Why can't we do bombing runs

on Taliban strongholds?

This is way above my paygrade. I am getting desperate texts from my Afghan exhange daughter about her family left there. She is afraid her nieces will be taken as child brides. I send my daughter money as often as I can to help get her family out. It's not enough.

I also have a friend whose son, an Army ranger, was killed in friendly fire there on Thanksgiving day several years ago.

This is a terrible, complicated situation. As usual, regular people caught in the crossfire, fodder for the war machine.

Tragic mess.

[Rustyeye77]

16. I dont know

I'm hoping that there will be some positive news.

[LanternWaste]

21. OK... what solution YOU propose?

It's no good telling someone their arithmetic sums are wrong if you yourself are unable to provide the method on achieving the right answer let alone the right answer itself.





Will he tea?

[Rustyeye77]

22. See post#18 in this thread.

By the way... what does Will he tea? mean
I looked it up a found nothing

[LanternWaste]

23. Post 18 is irrelevant to the question I asked.

As they are simply sentiments rather than practical plans of actions. Simply saying otherwise does not make it so. Sentiment is not policy nor is it actionable.

[Rustyeye77]

26. Well, in this situation , there are no guarantees.

I'm sorry there is no definitive answers.

The only definitive is the atrocities and war crimes of the taliban.

We need to get out...but not like this.

[CrispyQ]

7. +1

And +1 on your post below, too. I have no idea what we do, but abandoning them isn't right. Someone posted this article on another thread.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/young-afghan-women-fear-for-future-under-taliban/ar-AANhT8u?li=BBnb7Kz

snip...

I've been reporting from Afghanistan for more than a decade. Over the years, I've spent time with journalists, female judges, female members of parliament, human rights activists and university students. Many have become good friends.

They all say the same thing - we stepped out on a whim because we were encouraged by the Americans and their allies to do so. For 20 years the West has inspired, financed and sheltered this new generation of Afghans. They have grown up with freedoms and opportunities that they fully embraced.

Now they tell me they feel completely abandoned by the democratic world they thought they were part of.

In my most recent trip to Kabul, I spoke to Taliban frontline commanders and foot soldiers. They told me they are determined to re-impose their version of Sharia law, which would include stoning for adultery, amputation of limbs for theft and preventing girls from going to school beyond the age of 12.

I have no words.

[Rustyeye77]

14. Agree...abandoning them isn't right

[left-of-center2012]

10. Why did she self deport to Canada?

[cilla4progress]

12. We were at the airport, sending her back home to

Jalalabad at the end of her exchange year with us, and she and her sister disappeared from our hotel room!

After a week-long cross country bus ride, they managed to walk across the border near Niagara Falls and were accepted into Canada as refugees. They were 15 and 16 at the time.

They are heroes.

They were here on a State Dept. exchange program which required them to return home at the end.

It is a dramatic story, and we encourage our daughter to write a book.

[cilla4progress]

8. My god they must have planned for this

eventuality, right? Fer chrissake.

[andym]

9. Suffering from this withdrawal is and will be immense

The decision of how and when to leave Afghanistan should probably be rethought. Afghani's especially the women will have their human rights violated in horrible ways.

President Clinton had his regrets about the actions the USA did not take in Rwanda concerning the genocide, and the situation in Afghanistan while not genocide will probably result in similar regrets from this administration down the line.

[cilla4progress]

11. Agreed.

I hope whoever is the decider here will change direction

[Rustyeye77]

15. Agreed... we really should change direction.

I love Biden but i hope he rethinks this.

[panader0]

17. What do you want to do? Re-invade Afghanistan? Twenty more years?

Fact: They never wanted us there. Sure, we can set up a government that asks us to come in,
but the people don't want us there. Would you like a foreign government to invade the US because
you know we have many problems here too. The Afghans culture is not conducive to the structure
that the US was trying to impose on it. It was a mistake to invade 20 years ago, it's a mistake to stay.
You have been very vocal in your criticism of the withdrawal. What exactly would you propose to solve
this situation? What about all of the other nations in the world with great injustices? For that matter,
what about the great injustices in our own country?
I never believed that the only reason we invaded was because the 9/11 hijackers trained there, hell
they trained in Florida and Arizona too. Oil has always been at the core of our Middle East policies.

[Rustyeye77]

18. You're mistaken.

The people wanted us there.
They had more freedoms that they ever had.
They had a government ..elections...women worked IN and OUT of govt
I could go on and on about the progress and the people loved it.

Ive said this countless times.
Yes we need to get out but obviously our plans didnt work.
Admit the mistake .
Save the country from irreparable devastation.
Save the girls from being sex slaves to these monsters.

We should go back in , save the country from the taliban.
Not forever but for now.
Figure out how the army failed

I hope a multinational force but i'm not holding my breath.

No, we cannot be the worlds policeman and there are other countries with great injustices.
But this one is different.


What does the US stand for if not for this moment ?

[Rustyeye77]

19. OMT

We left with 4000 troops.

3000 troops are in or will be soon.
4000 troops are ,i believe, are in Kuwait ready to go in at a moments notice.

[totodeinhere]

27. If we haven't been able to "save" Afghanistan in 20 years then when will we?

The truth is that there is no military solution to this conflict. The longer we stay, the longer we will continue to lose American lives. It is time for us to go.

[panader0]

31. How much do you want a foreign army occupying the US?

That's how much they want us there.
Foreign tanks on the streets, bombing raids which kill innocents, completely different culture.
You can argue that we're bringing things that we, as Westerners, hold dear. (Kinda)
But they don't hold the same things dear. We can't assume to know what they want when we're pointing a gun
at them.
Perhaps you think we could just remove all the girls? While your heart is in a good place,
there is no good solution.
ETA: somewhere near 40,000 civilians have been killed since we invaded. Last year and the year before
had over 3,000 each year. Our invasion threw their nation into turmoil and death.

[Rustyeye77]

32. I guess I'm a bleeding heart.

BTW, why did Biden have 4000+ troops in Kuwait as a stand by?

Makes me wonder if hes hedging his bet.

[panader0]

33. Hey man, I'm a bleeding heart too.

War period, breaks my heart.
I think the troops are there to help with the evacuation.
Biden is not hedging his bet. He's been against the war in Afghanistan for quite a while.
Peace to you Rusty.

[Rustyeye77]

34. Peace to you.

[totodeinhere]

24. Your strategy will only work if we decide to stay in Afghanistan forever and if we decide

that continuing to put our troops in harm's way is worth it.

But if after 20 years of fighting and lost American lives we decide the time is now to get out then we should. There is no military solution there. Yes, people will suffer when we leave but if we decide to stay longer then we will just be putting off the inevitable.

I don't want to see the gains in human rights and women's rights squandered. But unless we want to say there forever losing more American lives then we need to get out. I support the President's plan to withdraw all of our troops with no strings attached.

If Afghanistan does become a haven for terrorists again then we can try to deal with that with air power, but our ground troop s need to leave. 20 years of lost American lives is enough.

[andym]

35. The alternative isn't only staying in Afghanistan forever

That is a strawman argument because it doesn't acknowledge any other possibilities. Though we were there for 20 years, we only tried a conventional nation-building approach in a region with a multitude of potentially incompatible cultures and social histories.

There are many possible alternatives once the situation there can be stabilized which will require the US troops, it's just a question of which might work. Everything from divvying up parts of Afghanistan among its neighbors like Pakistan (which uses the Taliban as surrogates) to encouraging the creation of tribal based regional countries. Perhaps encouraging large teams of volunteers from other Islamic countries to make Afghanistan a major charitable project.

An effective answer needs to come from the world community and people way smarter than me. A world conference on the problem is probably necessary-- perhaps sponsored by the UN.

[totodeinhere]

36. The British failed in Afghanistan. The Russians failed on Afghanistan.

For the matter so did Alexander the Great. And now we are leaving too. If there are so many possible alternatives, we didn't we try some of those alternatives during the last 20 years? We are not the world's policemen and we need to get out. Not one more American life is worth staying in that cesspool any longer. But if you want you can over over and fight the Taliban all you want.

[andym]

37. Past history does not predict future results

which is an important disclaimer for investments and should be for history as well-- though it can help with identifying some of the problems to be overcome.

That said there have been periods of stability in Afghanistan, the last was between 1933 and 1973. https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/SR314.pdf

Btw, to personalize the argument is a weak argument, by saying I could go and fight them. It is of course absurd since only a nation such as the US could help--no individual could make a difference by himself/herself. There should be a debate about how to proceed. In fact there should have been one in Afghanistan itself wherein the United States negotiated/planned with all the tribal heads as well as the government during a Loya Jirga.

[totodeinhere]

38. It's not such a weak argument.

Since you seem so eager to see many more American lives lost over a war we cannot win, why not set an example?

[Rustyeye77]

40. Cmon ...that's not necessary.

You’re better than that.

[secondwind]

13. A full committee hearing in the coming weeks sounds like it's too late, to me.

Just my 2 cents

[Rustyeye77]

20. Menendez was right

“I share the President’s desire to get our troops out of Afghanistan, but I continue to have concerns about our ability to protect the hard fought gains made for the rights of Afghan women and minorities, as well as our confidence level that Afghanistan will not again become a haven for terrorists. How we withdraw and what political arrangement is left in our wake is critically important."

I know Biden has dug in his shoes.
I think if he said we miscalculated the Afghan army and we need to save this country , no one would hold it against him.

[totodeinhere]

25. It is not within our ability to "save" that country unless we decide to stay there forever.

Is that what you want? Do you really want to see American lives continuing to be lost over there over someone else's war? 20 years is enough. If we couldn't fix it in 20 years we never will.

[Rustyeye77]

28. I respectfully disagree.

We had the right idea but for apparent multiple reasons , it failed.

[totodeinhere]

29. Well then maybe you should volunteer to go over there.

It failed because there is no military solution to this problem. The longer we stay the more billions we will spend and the more American lives will be lost.

[Thrill]

30. Let them defend their own country

Or let Russia or China save them

[BlueIdaho]

39. It's over.

We lost. Period.