To filibuster or not to filibuster? Biden needs to get a move on before Doofus Duck waddles back into the swamp (Biden-Trump Thread #128)

[TheNorthWestPawsage]

Still waiting for the kraken to appear.

.

At the moment there's a need to keep the Taliban sweet to some extent, to enable the continuing evacuation.

After 31 Aug, that will change – but I can't foresee what the change will mean.

Also, amid all the other disastrously wrong things, I can't get over the fact that the US agreement in February 2020 were with the Taliban only and the Afghan government didn't even get a seat at the table.

I obviously wasn't paying attention because that slipped past me at the time. I assumed the Afghan govt was there in the background and the US was just brokering the agreement. It simply never occurred to me that the US would make a deal with a third party about the future of a country entirely behind the back of the (immensely corrupt but still democratically elected) government.

The deal to which the Afghan govt had no input stated that that same govt would have negotiations with the Taliban to create a "new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government".

It stated that Taliban prisoners would be released as a "confidence building measure with the coordination and approval of all relevant sides." The Afghan govt got no say in this.

It's... jaw-dropping.

The Doha deal very very clearly annoints the Taliban as the new govt of Afghanistan.

Very good piece on the contents of the deal, the exclusion of the elected Afghan govt from the talks, and the consequences:

Ros Atkins on... Trump's Taliban deal
www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-58311135

Text of agreement here:

Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban and the United States of America
February 29, 2020

www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Agreement-For-Bringing-Peace-to-Afghanistan-02.29.20.pdf

Something else weighing on me is that there is another such landmine in another Trump-era deal.

I must re-watch it, if I can coax iPlayer to work, but IIRC the documentary "Trump Takes on the World" (I think ep 2), described how Trump/Jared managed to get Israel, Saudi Arabia and some other Arab states together by choosing a common enemy, ie Iran, and turning the focus on that.

However, IIRC, a necessary part of this was all parties to ditch all interest in the Palestinians.

I know this will have repercussions, although I can't yet see what those will be and who will cop them politically (presumably the Palestinian people will continue to suffer the real life consequences).

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000sct9/trump-takes-on-the-world-series-1-episode-2

@PerkingFaintly

The 'Art of the Deal' indeed, eh? Doofus and his minions knew they were going to lose and purposely left a disaster behind for Joe to try and fix. Just like an evicted tenant trashes a rental property to 'get back' at a landlord.

I've no idea what the thinking behind the deal was...

Perhaps not caring if it was trashed? Rather than deliberately trashing?

But as the piece by Atkins points out (repeating another analyst from 2020), "I can't think of a recent successful peace deal which has excluded the government from negotiations."

Across From what I've read and tried to understand, I really think it is that.
Doofus left this poisoned chalice/ticking timebomb, after he coerced the afghan govt into releasing 5,000 Taliban prisoners who then mobilised.
What a shitshow this has been but the seeds were sewn by the previous administration

Surely if it was such a massive issue, as a matter of urgency Biden could have worked all out to resolve all this.
Obviously he can't put the released people back, an extraordinary move.. To release them however Bidens team has worked hard to reverse nearly everything trump did...

But interesting not this

What a monumental clusterfuck. UK and US have revealed names and details of Afghan allies to Taliban. That's the ones who were promised we would support and protect them but who have now been left behind.

Tom Tugendhat
@TomTugendhat
How
@FCDOGovUK
handled this crisis will be the subject of a coming
@CommonsForeign
inquiry. The evidence is already coming in.
twitter.com/TomTugendhat/status/1431023852956626944?s=20

Johnny Mercer
@JohnnyMercerUK
·
19h
This will stop you in your tracks. Unbelievable. We gave them the names of those we trained to fight them. And some we will leave behind to the violence we see at the airport.

An appalling day, verging from rage to tears.
twitter.com/JohnnyMercerUK/status/1430963234845118469?s=20

I just opened this thread to ask the question, why did the US cut a deal with the Taliban (the enemy?) and not the Afghan Govt.

Did this mean that Doha was likely to end in civil war if the Afghan Govt/Army didn’t fall?

Why not a deal with the Afghan govt?

Thanks for the BBC link, some answers might be in there.

I have no idea why the US government cut a deal with only the Taliban in 2020, and am little the wiser after the BBC link.

The only insight was that the Taliban were getting what they wanted (some measure of power), and the US was getting what it wanted (withdrawal).

Maybe inviting the Afghan govt to the table would have meant introducing someone who wouldn't be getting what they wanted, so no nice deal to boast of?

But yeah, it's clearly madness.

Yep BoreOfWhabylon.

There was plenty of yelling about the US embassy burning passports which had been submitted by Afghans trying to get out... but I'm pretty sure it was to try to prevent the even worse scenario that you've just mentioned has happened with names and details of Afghans falling into Taliban hands.

It looks like the British Embassy wasn't able to destroy all documentation, either, as some paperwork was found outside. The UK has now managed to get some of the 7 families identified to safety.

Afghanistan: Every effort was made to destroy Kabul staff details, says Foreign Office
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58351938

Many knowledgeable commentators saying now that working with Taliban will be necessary in order to fight ISIS K.

What a wicked, wicked game.

The Doha agreement hands some power to the Taliban. So any US administration making or inheriting the agreement must have expected the Taliban to wield a certain amount of power in Afghanistan and eventually perhaps in Kabul

What's really caught almost everyone on the hop is that the Taliban has taken total control of Kabul so very soon. So many interviews of Afghans, journalists, NGOs... all completely taken by surprise by this happening right now, even if they knew there was a risk it would happen later.

Many people were in the process of making arrangements to leave (even though the Afghan government had asked the US not to conduct a mass exodus in case that itself precipitated the collapse of the Afghan administration), but thought they had more time.

Instead the Taliban are in control of Kabul even before the end of the extension from Trump's May 1 deadline to Biden's 31st Aug.

If the Taliban had taken over Kabul in two years' time – or even two months' time – there would be no mass evacuation because US troops wouldn't be there to secure the airport.

But this overlap has meant there's time to start a mass evacuation – but not to finish it.

All bloody awful.

What a wicked, wicked game.

Isn't it.

Yes @PerkingFaintly I really don’t understand it.

I don’t know what the relationship between US/Afghan govt was like but surely negotiating with Afghan enemies in this way was inviting civil war?

It makes no sense whatsoever and doesn’t seem to be a talking point anywhere.

Surely withdrawal should have been talking with Afghan govt and ensuring they had support. Did the US want the corrupt AG to collapse? But to the Taliban?

The entire thing is a clusterfuck.

X-post, just about to read yours

Yes I agree, it seems US accepted Taliban would take Afghanistan eventually just not this quickly.

I know Trump was crackers but I’m not prepared to mentally throw off an agreement with the Afghan enemy as Trump being Trump. He didn’t have that much individual power.

Edward Hardy
@EdwardTHardy
·
Aug 26
The January 6th Committee has requested documents from:

Steve Bannon, Jenna Ellis, Mike Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Jared Kushner, Kayleigh McEnany, Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller, Sidney Powell, Roger Stone, Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump & Ivanka Trump

The evacuation was never going to be pretty, but this handling was a fucking disaster.

The Americans knew the withdrawal date. They could have started flying people out from Bagram's base, long before. The same applies to the UK and other allies.

My gut feeling is that America will squeeze the Taliban through money, in order to target ISIS. It's a lot cheaper (and easier) to fund an insurgency than it is to run a country. 75% of Afgahnistan's finances came from foreign aid. That's obviously dried up now and I can't see China, Russia or Pakistan being keen to step in.

If the Taliban can't keep the country going, we are looking at Sudan or Lebannon Mark II. Civil war, breakaway states and a lot of suffering. Anyone with the cash, connections or skills will flee.

@Dragon50

Yes I agree, it seems US accepted Taliban would take Afghanistan eventually just not this quickly.

I know Trump was crackers but I’m not prepared to mentally throw off an agreement with the Afghan enemy as Trump being Trump. He didn’t have that much individual power.

Actually, he pretty much did have just that power.

The power to negotiate treaties is invested in the POTUS in the US Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.

HOWEVER, A POTUS can also basically 'enact' a treaty via Executive Agreements which requires NO legislative concurrence but are legally binding under international law. This is how Doofus got the Doha deal. It was an 'agreement', not a formal treaty. And now we are stuck with that deal.

@TheABC

Good post.

I'm just not informed enough to comment

Trump opened Pandora's Box and let them out.

Trumpism Has Entered Its Final Form.
In today’s Republican Party, Trump is becoming what was once unthinkable—conventional, unexceptional, even something of an establishment figure.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/08/radicalism-post-trump-gop/619891/