Last week, Biden sent 1,000 more troops into Afghanistan to assist with evacuations. There are now 5,200 US troops in Afghanistan, assisting with the evacuations of other Americans and refugees. Since August 14th, the US military has airlifted about 7,000 evacuees. And since July, 12,000 Americans and refugees have been evacuated. That number continues to grow.

What exactly should a Plan B entail?

Trump reduced US forces from 13,000 to 2,500 without evacuating a single Afghan ally, so he also did not "gotten the civilians out before the troops".

Not letting the taliban take over before getting people who worked for us out?

An unbelievably abject failure from a poor excuse of a president.

Maybe Trump would have gotten us into the same situation, maybe he wouldn't but this is uniquely Bidens mess. Trump (for all his many sins) did not hand a Taliban ran Afghanistan over to Biden.

Does anyone really think that Biden got voted in because people expected him to be a strong leader?

Nobody foresaw the rapid Taliban takeover which has not only made the evacuation immensely difficult but dramatically increased the number of people wanting to leave.

The plan published by the US in July was to evacuate 10,000 Afghan helpers during August.

According to Maj. Gen. Hank Taylor of the Joint Staff yesterday the US has already evacuated ca.20,000 Afghans, how many of those were Afghan helpers is not published.

It is clear that the Taliban takeover has driven people to leave now who just over a week ago could have jumped onto a commercial flight to anywhere.

The claims that the US withdrew their troops before evacuating Afghans runs counter to the reality that on Jan 15 there were 2,500 US troops and today there are ca. 5,000 in place.

On Afghanistan, I think the outrage on the right is as inauthentic as the defending of Biden is on the left. It will be interesting to see how US voters look at this in 6 months.

I think Biden was voted in because many people view him as being a sane leader.

So do you think that the US should go back on its promise to get our troops out and instead stay in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban in order to try to prevent them from taking over?

Too little too late. I wonder how US citizens feel when they can not even reach the airport to be evacuated.

U.S. forces can't help Americans flee to Kabul airport, Pentagon chief say

That would be even more stupid. That boat has already sailed...

The UK Sunday Papers are giving Biden a hard time, to say the least today.

Tony Blair has called the withdrawal decision "imbasilic". "Doolally" and "gaga" are adjectives being used by "cabinet insiders".

There is general anger that the US had "little or no consultation with its closest ally before withdrawing"...

What it says is that the US said it cannot guarantee safe passage but is doing everything it can to provide safe evacuations. Most of this is contingent upon the Taliban's own actions, which remain unpredictable. The evacuation is/was contingent upon Trump's 2020 "peace plan," but clearly that's not going as planned because the Taliban increasingly are not holding up their end of the deal, resulting in a messy situation becoming all the more messy.

Exactly.

Well then, by all means, let them go in and take over.

If as little as 2,500 could result in a relatively functioning state then perhaps keeping them there would have been sensible.

I don't claim to have the right answer or that there is one but this was absolute chaos.

Keep in mind that Biden 'inherited' Trump's 2020 peace plan, where a deal was made to free thousands of Taliban prisoners. The release of those Taliban prisoners, combined with the evacuation of so many US troops during Trump's administration only resulted in strengthening the Taliban. Violence from the Taliban increased dramatically. So essentially, Biden was handed a situation in which a promise was made to evacuate the US from Afghanistan despite a strengthened Taliban, which is part of the reason why the deadline was extended and why this evacuation has been so messy.

I think Trump had good intentions with his peace deal, but it seems to have backfired. Even the Afghan president was begging him to not release those Taliban prisoners and was warning the US to not trust the Taliban.

I can see why people would want that, of course. We all have these ideals about politicians we agree with. But it does not seem that he himself has a say in anything. I think Dems will push him aside, suggest health issues or such..I feel bad for him.

I do not know what is worse, a powerless, uneventful or excluded leader or an unpredictable dynamite one with a helluva temper.

It will have been forgotten, the US voters have little to no interest in foreign affairs. If one picks up a US newspaper in the US then typically you will find practically nothing about foreign affairs.

It is clear from his stubborn handling of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal and refusing to go forward until there was sufficient bipartisan support that he has a strong say in what happens. 19 GOP senators voted for this bill in a major victory for Biden.

And Russians are like.."We like it here, we goin' nowhere".

Biden vs Putin in GE - it was obvious it was about Afganistan.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj...en-11629398848

The only person who would have wanted to tell Russkies to stuff it...is Trump. Or whoever was behind him.