Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Russia and the Ukraine have never had good relations.

Are you speaking of the Afghan withdrawal debacle that is still going on?

I would not be hopeful.

The State is a deep one, and there are plenty of war mongers lurking within it.

#46 doesn't have the pushback to keep a war from happening if the Deep State wants one.

I am encouraged by the Afghan withdraw. That required some real steel to make happen, because the generals were against it. Trump famously failed at it, and I was pretty shocked that Biden saw it through. But you see the coverage calling it a "debacle" despite being very much not a debacle. Trump even came out and said he wouldn't have ended the war, (though who knows if that is true or just bluster).  That's a big threat - bigger than the Deep State. Letting the war people dominate the airwaves and talk about how terrible it is to not have war gets a lot of people fooled. There is a lot of magical thinking in politics, and foreign policy lends itself to magical thinking because most people don't pay attention to the various problems in other countries. They are just told there is a problem and, hey, we can fix it. 

There is a stronger anti-war sentiment in both parties, so that will hopefully be helpful. The duel party system doesn't help. Whatever happens, I'm sure people will say it was the wrong decision and btw elect my party next time and all your dreams will come true.

Our allies should have known about the withdrawal. Our citizens and partners should have been removed first. All of the equipment should have been removed or destroyed. We could go on about this, but there is no point.

It's an embarrassment, at best.

The great derby of buttressing and godding up our chosen swamp monsters. 

The great derby of buttressing and godding up our chosen swamp monsters.

I'd like to goddle with them in the cross hairs

Our allies should have known about the withdrawal. Our citizens and partners should have been removed first. All of the equipment should have been removed or destroyed. We could go on about this, but there is no point.

It's an embarrassment, at best.

Our allies did know about the withdrawal. Everyone knew about the withdrawal. The equipment was in large part what was left for the Afghan military to defend itself with. This is the kind of no win situation which our politics specialize in. You left equipment! What a debacle. Had we retrieved - "you left without leaving any equipment for the Afghans!" That's the tragic part of our politics these days - whenever something bad happens, the only real response is to explain why it is the fault of the other party. 

In any event the Afghan withdrawal was the one great thing any president has actually done in a decade at least.

So, dentist today, things are fine.  The hygienist, who was very pretty and nice (and told me she just broke up with her bf), asked if I had time to do a "mouth scan".  I was curious, and she was cute, so I did.  That was amazing, she stuffs this rather uncomfortable camera into your mouth and the computer manages to put together a 3D image of your teeth and bite.



She was cuter than this lady FYI.  It was free, or so she said, and I didn't get charged anything for the visit.

Intraoral Scanners - Choose the Best One for Your Practice | Benco Dental

Of course everyone knew. They just didn't know when. The Brits were shocked. They even helped some of our people get out. Sink that in.

For more analysis, I'll refer you to a friendly news outlet.


Even Biden allies question execution of Afghanistan withdrawal (nbcnews.com)

I didn't see a single person say in that article say they were unaware of the situation. Which is the point - everyone was aware of the situation. They were "surprised" that the Taliban took over the country, despite it being quite accessible that the Trump administration unilaterally negotiated the end of the war with the Taliban. The only thing that happened was that people started paying attention to the war, something they hadn't done for years while we were actually in it. Some sad things happened, and the impulse is to blame the current president. This is utter nonsense. 

The ongoing lesson from all these threads - Afghanistan, COVID, global warming, and everything else, is that people can't look at the range of outcomes and go for the best one. Instead, it's looking at anything that happens and then engaging in a pretty fact free mission of assigning blame or taking credit. It's not politics, it's reality television.