Biden was damned either way

[USAFRetired_Liberal]

Option 1 - Withdrawal and have the Republicans, MSM, and others complain about letting the taliban win, creating a place for terrorists, leaving allies behind, etc…and see his poll numbers go down

Option 2 - Stay which would have led to the taliban attacking troops and us having to send more troops in and surge and still getting complaints from the same people, but this time saying that we can’t be the world’s police, why is Biden starting another war, this will breed more terrorists, our allies need to fight on their own, etc….and his poll numbers going down

[Irish_Dem]

1. Jimmy Carter: "We are bad about making difficult decisions that everybody knows are right."

When faced with a no win situation, a good person goes does the right thing.

[lagomorph777]

2. Longer term, Biden's decision will benefit him (and of course the country).

He gets that.

[shotten99]

3. I've posted this earlier. As I see it:

On January 20th, there were 2,500 troops on the ground. As you guys can see, this was not enough to facilitate a massive spontaneous evacuation of non-combatants.

This amount of manpower made certain that every move a potentially re-elected Trump or incoming Biden administration would essentially turn out as it is now.
They had no options to make for an orderly departure. Had we started transporting civilians out in greater numbers before May 1, it would have sent a clear message that there was no confidence in the sitting Afghan government or its military. It would have also encouraged the Taliban to start seizing provincial capitals at a greater pace than it had been in January.

A renewed NATO buildup and/or direct military response to the advancing Taliban forces would have broken the same Trump sponsored treaty and sucked us back in indefinitely.

If they had actually cared about our Afghan allies, they would have been evacuated with adequate protection well before our boots on the ground were reduced to a skeleton crew. This would have had to happen sometime in 2020 or earlier.

[tirebiter]

4. You'd think with the passing of Charlie Watts this would be remembered