Biden/Harris Presidency Discussion Thread

An interesting day in the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday. Following extensive questioning, a number of fake news stories, propagated by the GQP were lanced by Milley & Mc Kensie. 

Firstly, the whole Milley committing 'treason' BS was dealt with: Milley's phone calls to China were entirely within the scope of his role and had involved many others including Sec Def and Mark Meadows, Trump's own chief of staff. 

Secondly, Milley and Mc Kensie had advised Biden to keep the 2,500 troops (the level to which Trump had reduced them) in place in Afghanistan indefinitely. GQP propaganda had painted a picture of Biden ignoring them, i.e. not listening to them. In fact, the Generals clearly said that Biden had listened very carefully to their military advice, but in the end he had decided that the military view was untenable as a) if the US didn't leave, the Taliban would re-launch its attacks on US troops and then b) the military would be back in looking for more troops as 2,500 simply would be entirely insufficient to make any impact and would incur many more casualties from a resurgent Taliban & resultant civil war. The military would have needed a re-insertion of 2,000 then 5,000 then 10-15,000 more US troops at the very least, and another 5 or 10 or 20 years of war. This military scenario was built on Biden's own experience of how the military had hoodwinked Obama over the years when the military axis, coupled with Hillary Clinton, sought 30 and 40,000 troops to be put into Afghanistan in the 1st Obama term. Biden is also the 1st President in decades whose own child (Beau) went to serve on the front-line, leaving him far more reticent to put more young lives in danger to support a gargantuan military-industrial complex who were only interested in making fortunes on the backs of those dead and injured soldiers.

Clearly the Afghanistan withdrawal was messy and strategic mistakes were made over many years. The final withdrawal was rushed and clearly caught everyone napping, by a failed & corrupt Afghan Government and senior military collapsing like a wet sheet.

All that said, the recently stated strategy of reliance on the 'over the horizon capability' to deal with terrorism on Afghan soil that might impact the US and the West down the road MUST be seriously examined to ensure that war crimes such as that committed in the recent slaughter of the 10 civilians, including 7 children in Kabul is never repeated. Milley and the Military, as well as those in the CIA must be held to account for blatant criminality abroad in the same way as law enforcement are being held to account for their criminal behaviour in the U.S., such as in the case of Derek Chauvin and his mates in the horrible murder of George Floyd.