Phoebe Joey

The Afghanistan pullout was not something I'd be proud to have overseen. It was not executed well.

I don't imagine it could have ever been executed well. My brother has always been critical of pulling out of places and situations like this because he feels like a lot of work goes to waste and it makes everything that they'd ever done mean nothing. (He was a Sergeant in the USMC, an engineer)

Trump left a hot coal for Biden to deal with. Basically, Biden had to get appraised of the situation, develop a plan, get the plan into motion at all levels at all bases, make sure that they wouldn't leave a power vacuum (not sure we accomplished that) and make sure everyone gets out safely. Biden had to negotiate for extensions because Trump left it as an impossible original deadline for him to achieve.

Definitely a compelling argument to remain that your brother and I'm sure many others hold. You hate seeing good men and women die or maimed in some dirt hole across the planet, but at the same time you don't want to invalidate their sacrifice by pulling the plug on an attempt to build a democracy (or at least a non-terrorist-harboring state) there.

Either way, the pullout was clearly under an extremely difficult timetable from the outset. My issue is that, once it was clear there were difficulties, Biden didn't give commanders on the ground the green light to do what they had to do so that it was conducted in the safest conditions and the most practical timetable possible. It's good if America keeps her word, but we shouldn't be so hasty in our attempt to keep a pact with the freaking Taliban that soldiers and civilians die as a result. Biden would have gone way up in my book then if he'd flexed some muscle in that regard.

The problem was that he was in a bad position of negotiation from the start. I don't think Biden would have made that decision alone, I'm confident that this decision was not something haphazardly decided as he has a very strong military cabinet, so I am sure that instructions were given to be followed so that everyone was on the same page. That's usually how it's done. If anyone was free to operate at their own level, that would've been disastrously sloppy, and logistics would be a nightmare. I'm convinced that this would've been the worse option. I'm also sure that he had to take diplomacy into consideration and consulted with his foreign ambassadors on what the situation at stake was.

Unfortunately, Biden was on the defense from both sides, because Trump did nothing to advance that. Sure, it left much to be desired - we agree on that. This isn't a pointing-the-finger issue for me, I just can't see how Biden could have done any better with what he was given.

And perhaps that is indeed the case. But, it still is a very bitter pill to swallow and I at least don't think it had to be that way. But I wasn't the President, so I'll allow that factors we can't perceive may have influenced it.

It was problematic, but at least we're finally out