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Comment by forgingahead | Hacker News Reader

I was told in January this year by many gleeful people they were so happy that "competence" was coming back into the US administration.

What an absolute bunch of morons and their failures.

*Edit: to answer the questions about "what should have been done instead", here is my reply from further down the page:

I would have liked to see a withdrawal that did not turn back the clock 20 years to where we were in August 2001, squandering all the blood and treasure that has been expended in 2 decades.

"Explainers" are why this is happening - weak minded people who prefer marketing (appearance of performance) over results. Surprising to me considering the heated replies to the other thread on the front page about how "story-telling" to appeal to VCs is fake news, and we should all be concerned about product quality first.

US governance (both domestic and foreign) has devolved into nothing more than marketing sizzle instead of product quality.

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Wit seems to me like this failure waa decades in the making anyways. What would you have done differently if you were in Biden's shoes?

Are you trying to blame this on the Biden administration? Seriously? What would you want to see happen?

Yes. Seriously yes. I would have liked to see a withdrawal that did not turn back the clock 20 years to where we were in August 2001, squandering all the blood and treasure that has been expended in 2 decades.

US governance (both domestic and foreign) has devolved into nothing more than marketing sizzle instead of product quality.

> […] squandering all the blood and treasure that has been expended in 2 decades.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy. So much resources have already been spent, that stopping now means those would have been wasted.

The problem is that no amount of extra resources will lead to a different outcome, and the resources are already lost, so stopping outright is the only sensible move. Current events (a somewhat peaceful transfer of power seeming imminent rather than years of (more) war) support this.

It would be different if some other outcome was possible; it doesn't look like anyone involved in the decision found this likely.

(Note that this outcome sucks for many Afghans, it just sucks less than the alternatives.)

> > […] squandering all the blood and treasure that has been expended in 2 decades.

> The Sunk Cost Fallacy. So much resources have already been spent, that stopping now means those would have been wasted.

The lifes of people have been wasted.

> The problem is that no amount of extra resources will lead to a different outcome, and the resources are already lost, so stopping outright is the only sensible move. Current events (a somewhat peaceful transfer of power seeming imminent rather than years of (more) war) support this.

Pouring money in wars means more wars.

> It would be different if some other outcome was possible; it doesn't look like anyone involved in the decision found this likely.

There is no other outcome. Wars are fought to loot and to kill people.

> (Note that this outcome sucks for many Afghans, it just sucks less than the alternatives.)

Are you sure ? It will suck for american collaborators just as it sucked for talliban collaborators. For the rest of people it will be the same. Americans and their NATO allies ( why is NATO involved in every american aggression war ? it:s suppose to be a defensive organization ) were not guardian angels. As the russian said in world war 2: they preffer the evil that speaks their language.

« Marketing over results ». Please explain to me how the results achieved during the previous administrations have been worth the enormous financial expenses.

From my point of view, the current policy of spending zero and getting zero result is much more efficient than the previous policy of spending trillions and getting microscopic results.

The mistake was starting this shitshow 20 years ago. And this is on the Bush administration.

The buck stops on the President's desk.

I would consider getting out of this boondoggle as soon as possible an example of competence.

> I was told in January this year by many gleeful people they were so happy that "competence" was coming back into the US administration.

I share your frustration - this withdrawal literally couldn't have been done worse. They were so ill prepared they left weapons for the Taliban to pick up, seemingly had zero plan for evacuation of their embassies and failed to tell allied embassies.

A withdrawal was definitely on the cards though - printing money for a year whilst people don't work has had a massive effect on the US economy. It just could have been done better. After all those deaths, after all that money spent, after setting up a Democratic government - and it goes down like this.

I would also take a moment to point out the fact that China is highly likely to have been involved, they literally were in talks months before this went down [1].

> What an absolute bunch of morons and their failures.

I think we can quite fairly call this one a failure by the Biden administration - Trump had zero involvement in their withdrawal planning.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/29/china/china-taliban-tianj...

I'm frustrated by the withdrawal too but let's not forget we had twenty years to help build a functioning army. It's not as though things were going really great and then oops, we left too suddenly. We've been failing at this--and the Afghan army has been failing to step up--for decades.

> [..] let's not forget we had twenty years to help build a functioning army.

Sure, 20 years of failure - we shouldn't have been there in the first place. But accepting your losses and performing an abysmal withdrawal process is entirely different.

> It's not as though things were going really great and then oops, we left too suddenly.

It was better than the Taliban overrunning every major city in a week. They must have been doing something to keep them inline. They deliberately waited for the withdrawal process to be mostly complete.

> [..] the Afghan army has been failing to step up [..]

This was very shocking and disheartening, the majority abandoned their posts and let them overrun the cities. All of that training and investment only to have it thrown away.

> Trump had zero involvement in their withdrawal planning.

Trump had a deal signed with the Taliban, in which a withdrawal of half the troops was already initiated, funding was cut, and 5k Taliban prisoners were released. Immediately after that deal, Taliban went on a huge offense and the end was set in motion.

Biden inherited a signed deal that had US completely withdrawn in May, and he even extended it to August.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doha_Agreement_(2020)

Trump signed the deal, but he didn't plan the withdrawal. In six months, the best they could come up with is handing over military equipment to the Taliban?

> Biden inherited a signed deal that had US completely withdrawn in May, and he even extended it to August.

We can't in good faith argue that Biden had no power to modify, extend or even cancel the agreement. He did so with many of Trump's previous commitments for example.

In the Wikipedia article:

> [..] a full withdrawal within 14 months if the Taliban keeps its commitments.

And then later:

> Despite the peace agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban, insurgent attacks against Afghan security forces were reported to have surged in the country.

Biden had every possibility to cancel the agreement.

Competence would not be getting embroiled in a unwinnable forever-war in the first place, but once you are, bowing out of one may be the way to go.

Also, you may wish to recall that the US spent most of 2020 making a peace deal with the Taliban [1]. An agreement was reached, outlining an American withdrawal in 2021. It's, uh, now 2021.

If the coalition-supported government can't secure its own territory after nearly two decades of foreign support, by this point, it can only be described as a failed state.

Just like entering this war was bi-partisan politicking, so was withdrawing from it. One would hope that some lessons were learned in the process.

[1] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-taliban-peace-deal-agree...

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