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Jac's avatar

I am so disappointed in the administration's poor planning & execution. A well thought out evacuation plan for both Americans and others who assisted us should have been in place before allowing the Taliban to advance. Now? Getting people out should be the priority. Process people after they are out.

What we can do from where we sit is contact our state's refugee organizations (IRIS in CT), and ask how you can assist incoming refugees from Afghanistan (& other countries like Democratic Republic of the Congo). These people arrive after fleeing with whatever they can fit in a suitcase or bag they can carry. I have trouble packing a suitcase for a vacation sometimes. I can't imagine filling only a suitcase for a forever move! They need apartments, furniture, food, winter clothes, jobs...we can help with these things. Their spouses and children need help learning English, enrolling in school, maybe help with homework...we can help with these things. They need help with figuring out public transportation and eventually getting drivers' licenses...we can help with these things, too. We can encourage our country and state to welcome refugees.

We can do things, but not everything. So we do what we can do, which is something.

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Susan Campbell's avatar

Thank you for this. This helps a great deal.

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Jac's avatar

And they will need jobs...we have lots of open jobs!

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Christopher Tracy's avatar

I hold Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump & Biden along with the last 10 Sessions of Congress responsible for our being in this endless war while ignoring the Saudi, UAE, Egyptian & Lebanese governments whose people sponsored and conducted the attacks on our soil on 9/11, and at the same time credit President Biden for having the courage to pull us out, holding out hope that this Administration can safely extract our citizens and their allies.

It’s the Jungian thing…

https://youtu.be/KMEViYvojtY

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Susan Campbell's avatar

What did we expect of our leave-taking, other than a quagmire?

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Paul Ashton's avatar

It’s becoming clearer that unless the Taliban stand down and let everyone (including Afghanis) get to the airport that we’ll be lucky if all the Americans get out. There were 2500 American troops there on Inauguration Day. There’s about 6000 there now just to secure the airport. I can imagine the reaction if suddenly ten, twenty, thirty thousand more troops were sent in to secure more area and access to the airport. To do air rescues of people in other parts of the country. If that were to become the case, it’s a shooting war again. It’s beyond painful to think that that is what it might take get 100,000 or so at greatest risk out of the country.

There doesn’t seem to be any good choices. How do you negotiate with a fighting force that accepts suicide bombing as a tactic? What kind of payoff would the Taliban accept, if any? Are they, as some have said, concerned about actually having govern now that they are back in power and maybe there’s leverage there? How much control do it’s leaders really have over it’s men in the streets?

This mess was years in the making. Given that our political dialogue has become so degraded, the chances we’ll learn any real lessons from this are pretty slim.

Afghanistan’s been called “the graveyard of empires”. Will it be ours because we get back in or because we walk away?

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Susan Campbell's avatar

I'd forgotten that, "the graveyard of empires." We just kept doing the same damn thing over and over hoping for a different result. We didn't get that different result we hoped for. We got the exact result we aimed for. What I've read of the Taliban's attempts at governing (and that's all I know, what I read) looks like a mix between strong-arm tactics and pleading, but with a quick move to strong-arm tactics. How do we negotiate with that? What do we use?

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Candace Low's avatar

This situation reminds me somewhat of the evacuation of Iran.

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Susan Campbell's avatar

Same here.

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Christopher Tracy's avatar

For all our national pride from joining Allied efforts in WWI & II and UN interventions since its inception, our unilateral post-War history from three hundred years of what are errantly called the “Indian Wars” to our Carribean, Central & South American, South Seas, African, Middleastern and Southeast Asian conflicts in our 245 years as a nation from Vietnam to Panama to Nicaragua to Tehran to Mogadishu to Kabul has been almost universally abysmal. We CAN do better; we just haven’t chosen to, from President Jackson and Progressive Party founder Teddy “Rough Rider” Roosevelt to the current Republican Congress who simultaneously want Biden to resign and our Afghan allies to stay out of America.

I guess I’m trying to say something about the duality of man… 🇺🇸🪖✌🏽

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