Even the media turned against him
So, why are people thinking A-stan is at all similar to any long standing ally?
Weird how
this is the issue the media is turning on Biden over. Not.
To be honest I think it would behoove everyone to look skeptically at reporting / propagandizing that is in the direction of 1) "we need to stay longer" or "look how awful things are (now that the US has pulled out)" or "we need more presence for security" etc. and 2) making sure EVERYONE (or every American, or every SIV, or every w/e) leaves.
The chief criticism of Biden IMO should be that the US did not withdraw
sooner (in line with Trump's date, which was in May. I think it's entirely possible, even likely, that had he remained in office the neocons would have gotten him to stick around past that too, but we'll never know).
"Our allies" in afghanistan - the government set up by the united states - were, for the most part, garbage. That's
why they were collapsing even before the US pulled out, and totally collapsed with US withdrawal. The US tried different methods of fighting the corruption but it never worked because it wasn't just a few or even many corrupt people, the government the US set up was essentially the corruption itself. It was all grift. The richest man in Afghanistan (as of 2019) was a US interpreter who skimmed millions of dollars on transactions he negotiated with local vendors. US-allied warlord carried out attacks because if there were more insurgent attacks that meant more US funding. Karzai shut down attempts to tackled corruption, his successor Ghani, after he fled the country in August, had his own embassy ask Interpol to take him in for embezzling money. This sounds to me like it was someone trying to take out a rival, but also he is alleged to have fled with four cars and a helicopter full of cash.
"Our allies" in afghanistan were also frankly awful people. One of the Taliban's tactics was using the Afghanistan National Police's proclivity for "bacha bazi" (preying on young boys) to assassinate police. This wasn't a couple of incidents literally
hundreds of officers in the ANP were killed that way. At one point IIRC the US just accidentally took sides in what was just a drug war because they mistook it for counter-insurgency. Additionally, it's my understanding that the US set up Afghanistan government organizations (like their Army and Police) were also widely infiltrated by the Taliban.
In almost every case that I've seen (I guess the exception is again, US government personnel and possibly NGO personnel) regarding people associated with the US stuck in Afghanistan, the media is using deceptive language to make the people in question seem more American. For instance, those "san diego students" were not American citizens, they were here on visas (from the article, probably ones granted to their parents for taking US money, which, see above). Even those who are technically citizens are generally paper citizens on technicality only, not your neighbors, and many of them went to Afghanistan in order to get in on grift.
However mismanaged this withdrawal is - any withdrawal is better than the alternative, which is no withdrawal, and the objective of any attack occurring right now is to get the US to remain in the region. The media framing is at least in some cases almost certainly has the same goals - that includes
particularly much of the media on the Right, which has always had significant ties to the establishment and the neocon-ery that goes with that, and is looking to turn anti-Biden and conservativism sentiment into more unpopular foreign wars. There's a reason the National Review and people like Richard Lowry are calling this "the media's finest hour," along with all the other architects of the disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It is not because these people or the media suddenly want what's best for the American people.
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