I presume that his attitudes and staff selection carried the day, and maybe could have done so for another term. But his mental capacity was clearly declining, and he is in fact expected to handle some things personally.
I presume that his attitudes and staff selection carried the day, and maybe could have done so for another term. But his mental capacity was clearly declining, and he is in fact expected to handle some things personally.
Agreed on NATO + Ukraine too but I wish they would allow us to strike Russia directly even with NATO equipment.
Maybe its China's turn to try to conquer the graveyard of empires.
In the end it was a very small commitment for the US, with huge gains not just for Afghan people but also for the US.
We can invade a bunch of countries in South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe and possibly "improve" lives there, impose our will, while sucking money out of America ostensibly forever.
Or we can sanction human rights abusers, offer proper asylum, and if there are any real on the ground changes from within the country then possibly support in a similar way to support in Ukraine.
I do agree that Bush deserves the blame for turning what should should have been a hunt down and destroy Al Qaeda mission into a sprawling invasion of various countries in the middle east
Regardless, Obama, Trump, and Biden had to deal with the situation as they found it, whether they agreed with the lead-up or not.
This was not a win, and the Biden Administration lying about it at every single stage of the process until the final troop was out was downright cowardly when all we had to do was continue to commit to sit on our asses while Afghani society rebuilt itself.
Anyone who didn’t want to live under authoritarian Islamist rule should have left during that 20 year period. I find it hard to believe the whole place reverting was a surprise.
Just because the US could take control and pretend to make progress doesn't mean it actually changed people's minds. In fact it actively poisoned the concept of women's rights in that region for decades
Thats because Trump agreed to get us out of afghaniston. Biden oversaw the absolutely disastrous execution, abandoning untold millions of military equipment in the hands of the taliban.
It is always the same story, Dems bad, I would have done it right. He had a 'credible deterrent', and would have completely ended the Ukraine war (that had been going on since 2014). Just like he claims now he will end the war, and bring back all the Americans imprisoned abroad if re-elected. It's one thing to say that sort of stuff and present a plan for doing so. Trump says it, and then pivots to even more bullshit.
Do you really think a different president, with effectively the same military leadership, was going to execute the pull-out in a broadly different way on a shorter deadline, and call it a success?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Taliba...
Owing to the change of administration, the Biden administration was obviously responsible for implementing the terms of the agreement as negotiated by the Trump administration.
I think both parties get an approximately equal share of the credit or blame.
Yeah, it turns out all we needed to do was run away in the middle of the night and let the country slide back into a illiberal theocratic hell hole.
You do remember what the "Afghan government" partners and soldiers were like right? Mostly child rapists and gang leaders...
His signature achievements essentially were one time cash payments to people.
I really do think his major failure was not pushing for a lasting achievement like implementing federal parental leave. He had the chance, but opted for a 1 year extension of child tax credits.
And of course the US has an illegal immigration problem. European right on the rise from 1/10th the number of illegal immigrants the US gets.
Deficit spending makes sense when the spending invests in the future. Every mortgage holder understands this implicitly. If these deficit levels concern you the obvious first place to start would be on the revenue side, by letting the Trump 2017 tax cuts expire.
I was so excited for the infrastructure bill, but unfortunately it got way stripped down.
You can tax me at any percent you'd like if you're using it (efficiently) for public transit.
Those are also the backbone of a lot of agriculture in the US, either a president tackles it and food inflation rises or you keep the status quo and prices steady.
There's no winning strategy, whomever tackles it will have it backfire someway, the US depends on exploiting cheap labour for its low margin industries.
This is all from my naive perspective as an American.
Edit: I'd appreciate a reply instead of a downvote. As I said, I'm asking a genuine question.
Generally you see radical right gaining more votes in Europe, even if they don't outright win everywhere. You also see that other parties adopt ideas from the far right. This means that policy is changing in that direction and that the discourse is more around those topics. Meanwhile research shows that this doesn't actually make voters vote less for the radical right parties, so those other parties are not gaining anything from it.
A few German right-wing dudes seems to have more or less provably received money and favors from Russia.
https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/politik/bystron-r...
There was also that strange Russia-Trump connection for which there was insufficient proof...
But the rhetoric of the centrists/moderates has been shifting towards the right as well, on the topic of immigration, and especially with regards to certain ethnic groups.
This is totally incorrect. Macron's party arrived 3rd in number of seats when previously it had a relative majority. He lost over a hundred seats in parliament and many key roles. Additionally his coalition is weakened because his allies really didn't appreciate his move and are already openly questioning his leadership.
He is in a way worse position now than he was before the snap election, and while you can say nobody won, no one can seriously question the fact that Macron lost hard.
As for the rise of the far right, it's happening in more countries than just France: Germany, Netherland, Italy, etc.
Good point. I replied to another comment below, I'd been reading political commentary/analysis saying that maybe his goal was to defang Le Pen's party by letting the French people see what they'd do with power before the election in 2027. But as far as I'm aware he never actually said that was his goal, it's just a guess, and from a hard numbers perspective he called a snap election and lost seats.
That's what he said in private at some point, but that wasn't his initial plan. We have another reported conversation that explain his plan was to benefit from the divided left to reconquer an absolute majority for himself.
It's only after the left managed to make a coalition that he started floating this idea of letting the far right ridicule itself.
But even if that's a stupid plan, he haven't achieved that either, the far right gained over 50 seats, and their electorate are now even more angry because they consider they got robbed of the election.
So no idea what commentary you were reading, but I'd recommend not to trust that source ever again on that topic at least.
RN, through no skill of their own, is in ideal position right now. The coffers are going to be full, they have 3 years to clean up their candidates and get the messaging correct, and they have absolutely nothing to do with the coming EU budget restrictions. And R! is finally dead after having served their purpose of shifting the discourse.
The UK may have just managed to get a majority, but that's a peculiarity of their electoral system. As a fraction of the votes, their far right gained a larger share than in previous years.
Similar effects can be observed in plenty of countries, among those Sweden, Germany to some extent, Italy, Hungary has been way left for a long time, etc.
The other right wing parties (Conservatives, DUP) got 25% between them
Where as the more progressive parties got over 50% of the vote - Greens got 6%, LibDems 12%, Labour 34% plus SNP and Plaid Cymru
To say the right did well in the UK election just isn’t true
Farage got 12.6% in 2015 and 14.3% in 2024. That’s not a massive increase. Tory vote meanwhile fell from 37% to 19%
On the centre-left side, In 2015 Lib/Lab got 38%, by 2025 that had increased to 46%
On the left side the greens increased from 4% to 6.5%
It doesn't help that the EU parliament (elected directly) does not have much power compared to the commission.
Quite the contrary, his party now finds itself with (considerably) less parliament seats that it had, and when it could get a majority by appealing to the "moderate" right, he now has to compromise with the opposition. His party doesn't even hold a relative majority anymore.
Sadly my country hasn't been the only European one where fascism is creeping up again. The far rights came out on top in the last European Parliament election in Belgium, Italy, Austria, Hungary and France. In the other countries, its scores are steadily, dreadfully, increasing with each passing election.
Personally, I blame the increasing economic inequality and austerity politics lead in Europe since the 80s.
Honestly, from my perspective, the rise of rampant immigration (and that too contributed by people of my community) is going to damage the entirety of Europe in the long run. Already I've seen firsthand the skewing of the demographic pyramid in the younger generation (0-18 yrs), a lack of worthwhile job prospects for second generation immigrants, and the rising tide of anti-national behaviors from members of migrant communities. As Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed rightly said, the next generation of terrorists will not come from Saudi Arabia or the Middle East, but from Europe. The kind of venom that mosques here in Europe spew is much worse than the extremely highly-monitored mosque sermons in the Middle East, from Egypt to Oman.
From my Muslim perspective, Europe will be a lost cause in a single generation, unless there is a MASSIVE cultural upheaval that stomps and quashes the current migratory trend. Austerity and inequality are just the sparks, but the bigger powder keg is the growing base of increasingly alienated migrants who have to face the austerity and inequality (see Leeds riots very recently). European society was never structured to take in so many incompatible migrants like American society is.
I am not saying we shouldn't have a sound immigration policy, but closing/controlling the EU's borders is highly unrealistic. Just look at Italy's far right government: they promised to stop all immigration to the country but since Giorgia Meloni's investiture, the numbers have never been higher.
The solution should reside in providing better integration and opportunities to migrants, who could very well be part of the solution to Europe's demographic crisis. The most diverse European cities are also the most productive.
Austerity and inequality are the direct results of deregulation, financialization and privatization of previously fine public services. Despite the right's endless whining, immigration has very little real impact on the economy, and crime, overall, has gone down in the last decades.
The issue is that Europe has already taken in far too many migrants than it can possibly integrate. Right now, taking more migrants isn't a feasible situation if they're impossible to integrate.
The solution to Europe's (or any country's) demographic crisis isn't more migrants. It's making a conducive and affordable environment for families and childbearing. Cheaper healthcare, affordable childcare, cheaper education, etc. and that's just scratching the surface.
> Despite the right's endless whining, immigration has very little real impact on the economy, and crime, overall, has gone down in the last decades.
So is that why Sweden, whose population is 10% non-Swedish now, has had to declare publicly that their crime rates have skyrocketed over the past decade? Why Poland, which took very few migrants pre-Ukraine, has had a very low crime rate? Call me right-wing, but while some of their claims might be horseshit, others are more than obvious truisms.
> The most diverse European cities are also the most productive.
The most diverse cities were already major production centers before migrants entered the picture. For a more accurate reference, compare the levels of non-residential investment into these cities pre and post the migrant crisis.
>In France less than a thousandth of the population could be classified as "immigrants".
France is obviously one of the few countries in Europe that could uniquely integrate its migrant population, but your numbers are wildly inaccurate too. Out of a population of 67 million, 8.7 million were foreign born. Sure foreign born could mean a lot of things, but that still isn't "less than a thousandth" of the population. And a significant number concentrate in the major cities, further ghettoizing them.
What happens in Sweden is mostly due to a resurgence of organized crime. I don't think closing down the country's borders (which, again, isn't feasible by any realistic mean) woulf fix the problem. To find a culprit, you should look at poverty rates which is always much more strongly correlated to crime than ethnicity or whatever else. Here's an article from the Guardian that explores this, for what it's worth: https://theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/30/how-gang-violence-...
When speaking of immigrants I always think of illegal immigrants from Africa, which is what the right talks about anyway. In that regard, I believe my figure of one one thousandth is more accurate.
We're not talking about closing down borders here. We're talking about strongly monitoring the kind of migrants you bring in. The UAE and Singapore are both heavily migrant driven populations, yet don't see this resurgence of crime that we see only in Europe, because they actually preselect their visitors and residents.
As it stands now, it is tougher for me as an affluent non-European to migrate to Sweden, or any other European country (except Switzerland apparently, where I'm at now) for the long term, than it is for me to settle in the UAE or Singapore. It is tougher for my highly skilled friends in tech who want to move to Europe, so they've chosen to move to Singapore instead. On the other hand, both the UAE and Singapore are making it much harder for low-skilled migrants to get in, while they find it much easier to go and settle in Europe. And they are, in hordes.
In short: no. Read the article whose link I posted above.
> We're not talking about closing down borders here. We're talking about strongly monitoring the kind of migrants you bring in.
And how could we do that ? We can't put policemen along every 4m of the European border. We are already doing random border controls, I don't think we can do much better without bankrupting ourselves.
> The UAE and Singapore are both heavily migrant driven populations, yet don't see this resurgence of crime that we see only in Europe, because they actually preselect their visitors and residents.
I don't think comparing the EU with the UAE makes much sense here. The situations are very different. Also, the UAE depends on massive numbers of foreign low-skilled workers to run the country. There are usually only allowed to stay for the duration of their work, and are hidden away from the rest of the country. There are many reported cases of worker abuse and inhumane working conditions. Overall, I'd wager there to be much more violence in the UAE than in Europe. In any case, you were speaking of values earlier, I don't think Europe has much to learn from the UAE in that department.
As for Singapore, I don't know what to say. It's a city-state, obviously it functions very differently than a continent-sized loose economic union of several country. Not that their ways have nothing of interest to us...
I'll conclude on our exchange, feel free to disagree:
You seem to believe about everyone can get into Europe, which is far from being the case. Famously in France, Macron's government last immigration law was the last one in a series of about a hundred similar ones since WW2.
I am yet to hear of an immigration policy that isn't just "give them less rights, give more money to the police, etc.", which as we have seen is only effective if our goal is to worsen the situation.
The influx of young abled men and women should be a net positive for Europe, and France, where businesses are always complaining of not being able to find enough low-skilled workers. Instead, we are too busy pushing back and making their lives harder to the point of making integration almost impossible and ostracizing them from society, thereby creating the conditions for crime to flourish.
As a Muslim, I don't want to see people praying on the roads and streets of Paris. I didn't want to see people chanting "From the river to the sea" for Gazans (who have a very strong reason for being despised by the rest of the Middle East). I don't want to see Muharram processions in Barcelona either.
Fun fact, the Middle East has one of the most relaxed migration policies across the world, yet a lot of European migrants are actually unable to migrate because they are criminals back home (the first condition to obtaining a residence visa is a police clearance).
Indigenous Muslims that you had mentioned are my absolute favorite kind of people, that I've eschewed the rest. The rest could actually learn a thing or two from them (but of course they won't).
It sounds a little bit like 4-D chess now that I type it out, I'm not sure I believe it myself.
The thing is with Macron, he managed to make the journalist class believe he's a genius (he's not dumb, but still miles away from being as brilliant as presented). So whenever he trips on a stone, you get an army of journalist explaining to you how he planned for it all along.
"His signature achievements essentially were one time cash payments to people."
Look at the $300bn climate funding in the Inflation Reduction Act and the impact on bringing chip manufacturing onshore with the Chips Act. All this with a nearly divided congress.Easily the most effective US president of my lifetime.
There's a reason people jokingly refer to him as President Manchin.
We need permitting reform at this point to tackle climate change in any meaningful way, which unfortunately the left doesn't want to touch.
The airlines would like all of your money next time they cancel your flight.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/migration?tab=chart&tim...
About 3% of the US population is in the US illegally compared to about 1% in the EU.
Overall, about 15.8% of the US population are foreign born, compared to 6.1% of the EU.
Just like in the US, immigrants aren’t evenly distributed though so some countries have far higher percentages - just as some US states do.
Whatever Russia is paying to post dumb shit like this, its not worth it.
Biden's presidency makes me wonder if we really need a head of state these days. Is it really necessary to have such a single powerful figure in the executive branch?
The biggest exception (IMO) would be in times of crisis, where a strong executive is necessary.
The balance between the President, the Prime Minister and the Congress or Parliament is different in different countries. In most of Europe, the President is mostly a "figurehead". The President does the diplomatic stuff, wines and dines with foreign leaders, maybe has the ability to veto laws or pardon people, but it's the prime minister who actually runs the government and appoints the cabinet.
I agree. Having a unified vision is the other key thing a president brings. Unfortunately though we barely see the fruits of a unified vision with how divided the two parties are today.
I have been having thought that the office of President should be split. With separate head of state and head of government that runs the executive branch. Another option would be to have triumvirate with command in chief that commands the military. Maybe the President has power to dismiss the others, or there is system than one person can't take over, like the CnC can never be executive.
You could do that with current structure by giving all the executive power to the Vice President, and then President would be left with head of state role. They would run as slate, with the visible, charismatic President, and the unknown, competent VP. If the President dies, the VP loses all his power.
Most limited Presidents have fixed terms, but I don't think there needs to be term limits for the figurehead. I was thinking that the head of state would attract those who want the spotlight.
The two historical examples that immediately come to mind (and explain the Latin term) both didn't end well.
I agree with the rest of the points you make. I think in Europe, the CnC is always a military post and needs to have done officer training and risen through the ranks, whereas the head of government (whether nominal or actual) is strictly a civilian role.
Whether European models would scale up to something the size of the USA is another question.
As an ignorant outsider, my impression is that the president is only supposed to 'preside' over things. Delegate and appoint people. Sign bills as a ceremony.
The real decision-making should be happening by the people's representatives in congress, while the Supreme court can guard against decisions which would violate the constitution.
But then parties form, partisanship happens, and congress stops making meaningful changes. Blocking anything that the dems put forward apparently gets votes for senators. You don't even need filibusters to prevent votes; just the suggestion of one.
So without a working congress, the President and the courts end up picking up the slack, and wield more power than they should.
I naively wish that there was some way for congress to actually be a congress, and for each member to vote his/her conscience on every single matter.
(because if you were gonna make a change as fundamental as not having a primary leader of the executive branch, you probably wouldn't try to limit your changes to that)
>Good support for Ukraine
You're looking through a particular narrow lens.
This seems to take all of the culpability, motive and free will away from Netanyahu. I'm not saying Biden couldn't make that call, but why do we assume Bibi would have actually stopped if so?
Biden's aides could probably come up with a more nuanced and more statesmanlike but equally effective threat than that, of course. Any US president would have great leverage to threaten an Israeli PM personally or politically, or threaten changes to US foreign policy that would work badly for Israel.
US Presidents aren't dictators and there is no way _any_ policy change too bad for Israel wouldn't have led to serious financial issues for any party. AIPAC is damn well connected.
In any case, I don't believe Netanyahu would have caved. No matter the threat - the crimes of Oct 7 were way too serious for any Israeli PM to leave unanswered. It was the equivalent of 9/11 - and just like the US back then, who completely flattened Afghanistan in retaliation, there is no way any other Israeli PM would have had any other realpolitik option than to fight until Hamas is gone off the face of the planet.
Well, yeah, it might not have been good for Biden financially or for the US strategic military position in the region. That's exactly why he didn't make the call - it's not that he doesn't care about the slaughter of innocents, but he cares about other things more.
I always say, imagine if it was France instead of Israel. Then you see how crazy the situation is.
If France started a war of aggression, the US would also 100% stand with France, especially if it started with France being hit with a terrorist attack. I’m not sure what you are trying to say.
The very likely case of Palestine replacing Israel would be a rapidly anti-US, anti-Western, anti-Democratic government and a loss of a very valuable port in the middle east due to the, y'know, rapidly anti-US issue.
Also depopulating Israel of Jews would almost certainly result in another Holocaust. Because Hamas - the most likely-to-govern organization for Palestine - has long enshrined Jew murder in its charter.
What alternative do you have in mind?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-israel-g...
For example, Israel was pressured to delay its offensive in the beginning of the war after the Oct 7th attack, which likely caused more casualties and prolonged the war and it was pressured in other ways that prolong the war. There was certainly nothing like "unwavering support", e.g. there was intense pressure to avoid an operation in Rafah, e.g. with the US administration saying the population could not be evacuated, but then Israel ignored that, and the population did evacuate.
On the other hand, there is virtually no chance that the US could have forced Israel to stop the war because Israelis view this as an existential threat. No threats or measures the US would take would override that view. This is likely why Biden is not able to stop the war by making a phone call.
I think it's important for people that want the war in Gaza to end and to see less casualties and suffering to understand this calculus. Israel's and Hamas'. What those people seem to be working towards in practice is a prolongation of the war, more suffering by everyone, and possibly the election of Trump in the US.
No chance? That's a very unimaginative view. Here's one way to do it that would have caused Israel to immediately stop: "If you keep going against what we are publicly saying, we will no longer veto security council resolutions against you, and UNGA will move forward with sanctions once they realize we're not going to protect you anymore."
If today is not ending, how can there be a tomorrow?
It's ok for you to disagree with those objectives, or Israel's assessment of threat, but you can still see how a truce that leaves Hamas in power does not align with Israels' declared objectives. If you can offer a truce to Israel that removes Hamas from Gaza and Israel rejected that then I'd support your argument but that option is not on the table at the moment (partly because it does not align with Hamas' objectives). From Israel's perspective the proposed truce neither guarantees the return of all Israeli hostages nor the removal of Hamas from Gaza.
Israel's current government is also unlikely to work towards the proposed truce because it involves releasing Palestinian prisoners which will be seen as a win for Hamas and also a potential for future violence. This is where Israel is divided internally with many (most?) supporting a truce and parts of the government working against it. But most Israelis would still see the truce as temporary and agree that Hamas' survival in Gaza is not acceptable after Oct 7th. If Hamas was to e.g. leave Gaza (like the PLO left Beirut) then many options open up for ending the war and moving forward (including removal of the current Israeli government).
Again regardless of your opinion/politics you need to see this from Israel's side if you want to be able to achieve a solution. The Ukraine/Russia conflict is similar in that you need to understand what both sides are looking for and what they're willing to concede before you can end that war. Just saying that you think the war should continue until Russia is repelled from the entirety of Ukraine, while potentially a reasonable moral position, may not be a practical one or one that minimizes the number of people getting killed. I say that as someone who is 100% supportive of Ukraine. There's the idealistic outcome and then there's reality.
It's certainly true that if Israel has no other alternatives, and under the assumption it views Hamas' survival in Gaza as an existential threat, then it will continue to use force to achieve that objective, which will certainly lead to more people getting killed. Israelis and Palestinians.
If this is the scenario we're looking at, and we want to minimize Palestinian suffering and casualties, then we should be looking at how this force can be used in the most optimal way to achieve these objectives. For example, a truce that gives Hamas a chance to rebuild its defenses and re-establish control over broader areas of the Gaza strip is almost certainly going to lead to more suffering and casualties.
I think it is a mistake to claim Israel is acting with anything but genocidal intent. Even their own legislator shows this genocidal intent when it validates obviously invalid targets. Their aim is not the removal of Hamas from power in Gaza, but the elimination of civilian order of Palestinians in Gaza. And it is clearly and obviously moving towards that goal.
Hamas is not an existential threat to Israel. They don’t have the military nor political capabilities for that. At best they are a threat to Israels ongoing policies of apartheid. But in that regard, so is the ICJ.