Like the Chapo Trap House answer I think would be that seeing America retreating with its tail between its legs and the Taliban just casually strolling back into power makes Acela Liberals feel bad and that “does a thing make me feel bad” is the entire basis of their politics. That makes some sense but I don’t know that it’s totally convincing to me.
I think my boy Glenn Greenwald is right here and these mfers just fucken love wars:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1426243368825364487
https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1426243858778759173
like, nothing gets Brian Williams’ dick harder than shooting off a hundred cruise missiles.
Lotta connections to people who are very invested in the war and in the US military and government not looking stupid. Combine that with a group of people who feel a lot of pressure to arrive at some kind of consensus because being outside the consensus of the right people is really sticking your neck out. You might endanger your status as a “serious person”.
But you could substitute “the average American” for “Brian Williams” here and it’s still been mostly true for the last 20 years. You’re still left with the question of why a split has developed between elite media types and the Democratic base in general, which I don’t think is explained by the Democratic base experiencing the burden of fighting wars. Only 2400 odd US soldiers died in Afghanistan, disproportionately in the early stages of the war. The average American really experienced very little direct burden of the US presence there.
Little direct burden, sure. Although for a comprehensive toll we should look at how many arms and legs and traumatic brain injuries were sustained. But then do we count three limbs on one soldier as a single “wounded” statistic, or three separate limbs lost? Tough questions.
The Democratic base didn’t experience the burden of fighting wars. Poor red staters fought in Iraq and Afghanistan far more than the Democratic base, which is increasingly urban college graduates. The people who support this war are bipartisan elites, Lindsey Graham and Nancy Pelosi. And that’s why everyone in Washington is so mad at Joe Biden, because he did the actual courageous thing that obviously needed to be done for over a decade. But his Nobel Prize winning boss was too cowardly and weak to follow through on. Obama wanted to do the same thing in 2009 that Biden did in 2021. He was just too weak to actually do it.
It should not be surprising that technocratic media elites who have no personal military experience tend to defer to military “experts” who do have that experience. Would they be better journalists if they had been drafted at some point?
They know there are experts at Columbia and NYU right in town who they could defer too.
I have no idea how many of those are civilians.
This seems a bit of a stretch.
They basically exchanged tweets.
I don’t know honestly, considering context Biden has a HUGE advantage on Obama.
Coming in after Trump, WOAT president, after Republicans have completely shown their ass.
Obama operated in a time where 90% of the middle and left of the country was completely asleep to what republicans were really about, attacks on him dismissing Republicans would have been taken seriously etc.
It’s just a completely different game now. Biden came in with the most popular Republican in history having already signed an agreement to pull out. It was shown to be widely popular with voter. I think Obama does the same in his situation.
I think Obama definitely would have out performed him on stuff like voting rights, bigger stimulus, and on most domestic stuff. With the benefit of everything I think Obama would push much harder to not let Republicans get a stranglehold on democracy.
Plus the whole race thing let attacks actually land on Obama that don’t on Biden.
I mean a big part of the left was calling for supreme court packing, nuking the filibuster etc. Politics is a different sport now.
Both suck ass, but Biden is the one who’s going to waddle through this term allowing Republicans to rig the game and isn’t even trying to stop it.
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lol read the article. Looks like its a right wing site and they’re excited because that " frog " is PePe
Also at the end
Much of the blame for the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan has been placed by experts at the feet of the Biden regime, which moved back the deadline for withdrawal set by President Donald Trump in 2020.
Ah yes, a faster withdrawal would have been less chaotic.
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Completely disagree. Biden was advocating withdrawal from Afghanistan while Obama was president and Obama still didn’t do it. He knew that despite it being the right thing to do, withdrawal had the potential to crush his legacy and he put that before the lives of others.
I also disagree with him outperforming Biden on social issues. If anything, Republicans and their supporters would remain even more engaged in opposition to him because of his race.
Honestly, Biden has an approach similar to Obama. Look at healthcare as an example. Obama throws up universal healthcare. Republicans and the healthcare industry make some changes and it passes. What has Biden tried to do with infrastructure and covid stimulus? The same exact thing.
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how bad has this withdraw actually been? As far as I can tell, the Taliban has killed zero americans, shot at zero departing airplanes, etc. Have I missed something?
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The media is complicit and repeats whatever their national security sources tells them, and just repeats that shit all day long.
As someone else pointed out, if this was the end result its much better for the people of Afghanistan than 1-2 years of an extremely bloody civil war that ends with the Taliban in charge anyways. Only thing it did was showcase very well how extremely wasteful our time and money was.
Like 90% of people think the withdrawal was a good idea, and 90% of the media coverage has been about how it was bad.
I
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Hence why it’s being perceived so negatively. I think this is the succinct answer whenever anyone asks “what is so bad about this withdrawal”
right, it’s completely embarrassed whatever was left of the neocon warhawk doctrine
They’ll need to come up with a new way to convince Americans to continue to give up health care, labour protections, effective public schools etc. in exchange for transfers to tax dollars to “defense” corporations.
https://twitter.com/DanLamothe/status/1429137103527587848
Turns out the nation building we needed to do was inside ourselves all along
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