Originally Posted by
Easy Street
FWIW I thought LB's post about Biden was crass in the extreme. Presidents and prime ministers generally don't get to take easy decisions: those get taken for them further down the food chain. Biden had the choice of withdrawing or re-escalating a conflict for which the US electorate had long lost its appetite. He took a decision which both Obama and Trump kicked down the road. History will judge whether he made the right decision, just as it has judged that Reagan did in Lebanon, and Nixon and Ford did in Vietnam, both despite facing heavy criticism at the time. It's a momentous decision that deserves and needs deeper context, analysis and reflection than a crass emotional reflex to undeniably shocking events. Ten thousand Afghans have been dying annually in this conflict and I don't recall there being any heart-wrenching at all about that, either in the Western media or in this forum.
Contrast Biden's gritty decisiveness with Boris folding in the face of nagging from his wife about a plane load of stray cats and dogs. I can't quite believe the Defence Secretary chose to acquiesce. Now that would have been an impactful resignation, unlike that of the USMC officer being discussed elsewhere.
Big difference between dying in battle and being murdered.
The complaint is not the withdrawal....but the manner in which it was done and thus turned into a disaster.
But...as Harry Truman rightfully said (and affirmed by that piece of wood on his desk in the Oval Office). "The Buck Stops Here!". No. matter how you try....Biden owns this....every bit of it. He is the President and he made the decisions that got us to this point. That is unless one is right when it is assumed others are making the decisions for him and he merely rubber stamps them "Approved".