I actually agree with you. Our prolonged presence there was a mistake and to think any withdrawl under any administration would look any different is a mistake.
There damned well better be some DFCs coming out of that.
So phrased another way, you’re saying that leadership just “going with the flow” and “going along to get along”, not being willing to speak up for fear of personal or professional reprisal, and remaining silent instead of bringing up and/or discussing a different point of view or suggesting alternative courses of action if these thoughts are counter to the accepted narrative might have possibly detrimental consequences...?
That's the cynical way of putting it, I guess. My point is that there's flaws to the "I've got a task, and I'm going to take the Message to Garcia come hell or high water" mentality. I'm not going to accuse people I've never worked with of having no moral backbone, because that's a shitty and cowardly thing to do anonymously from the comfort of a keyboard and no responsibility.
It was never going to last forever, but this was not the way it had to end. Supposedly, POTUS personally made the call for a complete pullout over the objections of Miller, Milley, and others, who wanted 2,500 sets of boots on the ground until a negotiated settlement was reached. Now he's going to have to own the fallout, because that IMO was the right COA. Set the stage for an orderly withdrawal, with a CONPLAN in your hip pocket to flex to if the Taliban welshed on the deal. At best, you get a jump on the emergency destruction plan and the SIV process for those that needed it.
Surprising they are participating…you’d think the MEU CO would want to keep his Marines in the boat to support any contingencies that may pop up.
Why?
Remember when you impugned someone’s professionalism for suggesting something that turned out to be true? What ever happened to that? Aren’t you still climbing the ladder? Do you notice the similarity between your “Ive got the task” analogy and your willingness to accept a coordinated lie about the origin of covid?
Sarcasm, and possibly some bitterness at being held on a boat unnecessarily when Marines were requesting DS from MEU skids…but they needed us on the ship for when the balloon goes up.
