Kurt Eichenwald Profile picture
Aug 20, 2021 16 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Ok, since no one seems to know any of the history of Afghanistan before this week, a refresher:
2/29/20: There are 13,000 US troops there. Trump reaches deal with Taliban. Agrees Afghanistan Gov, which is not part of deal, will release 5,000 Taliban fighters. Requires Taliban...1
...to take action against al Qaeda, not to attack US troops or coalition forces, or launch high-profile attacks.
3/1/20: Afghan president freaks out, says US has no authority to commit to release prisoners held by Afghanistan. (Trump Admin forces it to happen anyway.)
...2
...
Despite there agreement not to attack any provincial capitals, Taliban unilaterally attacks Afghan forces in Helmand province.
3/19/2020: DOD IG says U.S. cut troop levels by more than 4,000, even though “Taliban escalated violence further after signing the agreement"...3
8/18/2020: DOD IG releases report saying Taliban didnt distance itself from terrorist organizations in Afghanistan. UN and U.S. "Taliban continued to support al-Qaeda, and conducted joint attacks with al-Qaeda members against Afghan National Defense and Security Forces.”...4
...in other words *every element of the agreement - dont attack, renounce terrorists, don't work with terrorists - had been violated.
9/3/2020: Afghanistan, pressured by Trump, has been releasing the 5,000 Taliban in jail. Last 400 released this day. They return to fighting...5
...9/16/2020: In continued violation of the Trump agreement, Taliban - reportedly working with al Qaeda - attacks 3 provinces in Northern Afghanistan....
...Immediately after election, Trump Admin leaks theyre going to do a massive, rapid withdrawal of US troops before inauguration. Distressed by reports, Rubio warns of “a Saigon-type of situation." McConnell says "would hurt our allies & delight the people who wish us harm"...6
11/17/2020: Without consulting with incoming administration, which is still being blocked from security briefings, Trump Admin announces rapid withdrawal of troops down to 2,500 by 5 days before inauguration. That's down from 13,000 the year before....7
...this was playing with people's lives. This was incompetence writ large. But here is where Biden screws up - by not more fully reversing the nonsense Trump had done.
2/3/2021: Afghan Study Group, created by Congress, urges Biden to abandon the Trump timetable, and set.../8
...withdrawal on all sides - both Afghan government and Taliban - meeting all commitments under a peace framework that had been reached. So, it would be based on status, not date.
3/25: Gen Richard Clarke of Central Op Command says Taliban has not met its obligations...9
...under treaties & frameworks.
4/14: Biden sets a deadline of 9/11 for getting out of Afghanistan, ignoring recommendation of the working group. This is the big mistake.
4/18: Trump rants and raves, saying Biden should start pulling everyone out beginning in about 2 weeks...10
...so yes, Biden made a mistake. But we are dealing with a situation where the former president pulled down troop levels to a ridiculous level just five days before inauguration, ignored attacks and violations of a treaty he hit, and pretended he had succeeded. He gave them...11
....5,000 fighters. I mean, look at this: The Taliban was violating *every term* of the treaty, and Trump pulled out 1000s of troops. Other than setting ourselves up for a firefight with the Taliban, the only options seemed to be bringing people back in, changing the timeline..12
...or this. I dont know. Its a cluster. Im not even sure I can call what Biden did a mistake. Did they have intel that the Taliban, which had been moving forward since Trump struck his stupid deal, was planning to attack our troops? Who were way outmanned? I dont know. But...13
...this idea that this had some other easy solution or if - instead, as Rubio & McConnell said in December - the rapid drawdown of troops by Trump set up a disaster, a Saigon-type situation that was handed off to Biden, I don't know. But this is what you get when you...14
...allow violations of treaties, petulant troop withdrawals, and media who seems to have no memory, and a political party hopeful that no one will remember. I am not excusing Biden. I just want experts to say,given the actual situation he was handed, how it should have been done.

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More from @kurteichenwald

Sep 16
Make no mistake: The "Haitians are stealing your pets to eat them" lie is a variant of the blood libel that Jews have faced for centuries: In that, Jews are stealing Christian babies to use their blood bake food (Matzah).

Trump and Vance are lying about legal residents..../1
....accusing them of stealing beloved members of the family, and eating them. The point of the Haitian Blood Libel is the same as the original Blood Libel: To create an "other," to unify the hateful and ignorance against an imaginary enemy in their midst, all to seize power.../2
...so please, stop calling the attack on lawful American residents from Haiti as a "lie." Call it was it is: The #HaitianBloodLibel generated by Trump and Vance. A century ago they would have used Jews. And Fox News would have been the May 1934 volume of Der Stürmer.../3
Read 4 tweets
Aug 26
The appeal filed by Jack Smith on Judge Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents cased underscores an embarrassment that should not exist in modern times, things that were evident in her ruling. Cannon is clearly either stupid or corrupt..../1
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
...there are SO many elements to her nonsense in her ruling that have been just jaw dropping (ruling that past participles are the same as past tense, and on and on) but Smith thankfully points out the two that most annoyed me: She described what was the central finding in.../2
...US v Nixon as nothing more than "unpersuasive dicta." In fact, it was the foundation of the SCOTUS ruling and had been fully briefed by both sides. Second, she used the TITLE of a statute to overrule what the statute said, even though it includes an explicit statement.../3
Read 6 tweets
Aug 25
I have been holding my tongue for a long time, but I am SICK of self-identified evangelicals saying they read things in the Bible that 1. Aren't there or 2. Are being massively misrepresented and 3. DO happen to be garbage appearing on Facebook posts. I am writing this only.../1
...because these are the same kinds of people who misquote or cherry pick the Bible to justify their hatreds and self-worship. Worse, they say it with such self-confidence that other evangelicals (who are constantly found in polls to be the most Biblically illiterate, worse..../2
...than atheists. Mormon's know it best, even though their scripture if the Book of Mormon.) Anyway, here is the latest on the Holiness of Trump "based" on the Bible. It comes from Lee Greenwood and Ted Nugent's wife who says she "read" her claims in the Bible. (She didn't)..
Read 16 tweets
Aug 9
Trump's lies sometimes involve a series of events from his past blended together into one where he is the center of the universe. His lie about going down in a helicopter with Willy Brown:
1. Three of his executives went down in a helicopter in 1988 and died. (Trump lied that...1
...he was supposed to be on that flight but backed out at the last second.)
2. He met with Willie Brown in the 1980s.
3. He flew in a helicopter with Jerry Brown (and Gavin Newsom) during his presidency, during which he fretted that the helicoptercopter would go down.

While..2
...like I said, he often blends stories into one where he is at the center of an adventure or he is the hero of the tale, this one is so bizarre that I suspect we are watching an increasing dementia, which is in the family. Someone with a habit of blending memories...3
Read 4 tweets
Jun 28
That SCOTUS overruling ANOTHER precedent - this one that established the Chevron doctrine, which has been cited in literally thousands of federal cases - was signaled by the court in 2022. Then I said the ruling in West Virginia v. EPA was the most important in decades.../1
...because it showed that the conservatives were gearing up to take regulatory administration out of the hands of experts and place it in the hands of the political hacks that now occupy our courts . It is an obscene power grab by this court, which has already ripped away.../2
...the authority of Congress, state legislatures, state courts etc. whenever it wants to drive policy. No precedent is safe. Stare decisis is over. This is an activist court unlike any in our country's history.

Mark Lemley broke down the court's imperial power grabs, and how..3
Read 4 tweets
Jun 14
I know lots of gun enthusiasts and collectors (I grew up in Texas.) And I have never met one who isn't horrified by bump stocks. "You can't aim the damn things," one said to me a few years back. "They're good for only one thing: Spraying lots of unaimed bullets into a crowd."...1
...make no mistake: Gun nuts who demand them have no interest in shooting *at* a target. They just shoot in the general direction. These are nothing more than machine guns that can't be aimed. Yet SCOTUS, in its new role as an adjunct to the GOP policy committee, breaks down.../2
...the gun not into its function, but to its means of pulling the trigger to jump through new hoops to declare the extremist wing of the GQP as sole arbiter of the Constitution. Their argument - that it is not the speed of firing, but the technique - is fatuous sophistry.../3
Read 7 tweets

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