>>Trump authorized negotiations between the US and the Taliban without the Afghan government in the room - which seems like a significant blunder -- but Biden administration seems to of not done any better with the withdraw either. Whole thing has been a waste from the start.
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>Yes, Trump set up that deal (and it WAS a bad deal), but was never ratified by the Senate.
>Biden was not bound by the agreement - and he demonstrated elsewhere (Iran deal, Paris accords) that he was willing to change course.
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>There's an argument to be made that the Taliban was in huge breach of the deal before we actually started to pull out - now, whether Trump would have done anything, we'll never know. I agree it was a horrible, horrible deal that Trump came up with. Trump was a foreign policy nightmare - infuriating our allies and making weird statements about our enemies (e.g. the North Korean dictator "Loves his people"). But unless Biden is able to mend this, this will forever stain his legacy.
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>The idea that he has to send "back" about 6K troops is all you need to see that he is a failed commander in chief right now.
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>The biggest slam last night came from, of all people, David Axelrod. When Biden was boasting about being about to do counterintelligence even if we weren't "in" the country, Axelrod pointed out that our intelligence had already failed while we were there to begin with.
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>A year and a half ago, I was sharply critical of Trump for the botched COVID testing and his absolutely asinine comments about COVID. It was at this point that I agreed 100% that he was not deserving of re-election. Unless Biden is able to mend this, I think the same thing can be said. Biden's speech yesterday was embarrassing.
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>I am not religious, but I am praying right now for our troops who have to go back over there, and for the Afghan people who helped us during the war. No matter how much I detest our president, I will NEVER EVER wish bad fortunate for our troops.

Well said Kevin. It seemed pretty obvious from the start that this would happen the moment we left Afghanistan - it's difficult to defeat fanatics in their own country because all they have to do is just wait it out. 20 years or 100 years doesn't matter. I have to admit I thought it would take longer than just a few days though -- the Vietnamese were able to hold out a couple of years after we left there.