The end of the world is just beginning for shipping

> Nope. Malthus made his observation based on history. He just happened to do so at the worst possible time, as the next couple of centuries saw unprecedented advances in food production and distribution followed by the more developed countries getting their population in check

Isn't that also a problem with the "refutations" of him? They're also based on history, just slightly more recent history. It's quite possible that future "advances in food production" will eventually fail to keep up with (perhaps slower) population growth, or future changes (climate change, reductions in fossil fuels, etc.) will undo some of the previous "advances in food production" required to sustain our current population.

So things like that, that the president does or does not do, can be laid at the feet of the president.

But he does not control the economy, and does not know the perfect answer to a black swan event like Covid… since we don’t know what the perfect response looks like. For example, hard lockdown = possibly less Covid, more harm from the lockdown. No lockdown = possibly more Covid, economy keeps booming (unless everyone dies of Covid!). What’s the optimal mix? Nobody knows. The president, even if he knows, cannot snap his fingers and make it happen.

I voted for Biden in 2020. It feels better to say this wasn't his fault for those of us who voted for him. It was his fault, and primarily a failure of his administration, especially Jake Sullivan, who is the least qualified National Security Advisor I've ever seen, including those who advised GW Bush, which is saying something. His qualifications are primarily political and partisan, and he's incredibly thin on actual defense matters. Feel free to take a look at his background, and prepare to be depressed that he wasn't fired immediately after that fiasco. In fact, nobody was fired from the administration, which for me was the most horrifying part. Obama's administration NEVER WOULD HAVE LET THIS HAPPEN.

Specifically, "the planning by the military" was under constraints placed on it by the executive branch. (The constraints were that no more troops would be added on the ground to "cover the withdrawal" and that all civilian contractors had to be out of country months prior, which immediately destroyed all air capability depended upon by Afghan forces) And the idea that Biden was committed to any plan concocted in the Trump administration is absurd. (this treaty was already long in violation by Taliban as well) Nobody who voted for Biden, myself included, expected (or wanted!) him to cling to any plans developed by the previous administration. It's an excuse. I'm a former defense/intel contractor, I've been to Bagram on multiple occasions, and everyone in the DoD community knows that this was an executive branch mistake conflated with malignant obedience at the Pentagon command level.

In case I sound partisan (I'm not), let me be extremely clear in my statement: The botched withdrawal of Afghanistan NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED under Obama. His administration was vastly more competent than the current one, on multiple matters.

Without a surge of troops to cover withdrawal, the US embassy in Kabul could not be secured simultaneously with Bagram. The decision was made to instead focus on securing the embassy AND HKI airport and to abandon Bagram instead. As is typical of decisions coming from the top levels of the Pentagon under intense executive pressure, all feedback from the ground of the plan's lack of feasibility was ignored, along with warnings of the rapidity of ADF collapse once civilian contractors were pulled from the hangars.

I'm stating this because, not unlike the highly partisan administration under GW Bush, when partisans get too much power in administrations, you get disasters like this. Partisans are selected for loyalty over competence, and it's a growing epidemic in US politics that partisans get more and more power in successive administrations.

> See the massive gains in agriculture, for example.

Right, wherein Brazil is torching the Amazon to make room for pastures.

Obama never would have withdrawn under the conditions. At the time of withdrawal, the Taliban was already long in violation of that treaty. Additionally, the US could have easily done as the Pentagon originally asked, and surged in troops to "cover the withdrawal" which is a standard tactic (and term) for withdrawing from war zones. By refusing to add boots on the ground to "cover the withdrawal" the US military was forced into a no-win situation, having to abandon Bagram and use HKIA, a completely indefensible airport with no controllable perimiter.

Let me be clear:

The withdrawal, if executed properly at a tactical level, was always going to end in a Taliban takeover. However, various tactical failures made it a vastly worse and accelerated affair than it needed to be.

I will again emphasize that this NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED UNDER OBAMA. It's important to state this, because we too often devolve to partisan comparisons on these topics, when the reality is that different administrations have highly varying degrees of competence in their personnel. Biden's biggest fault, in my opinion, is how loyal and kind he is to his team. They helped get him elected, he's very loyal to them for that, and as a result hasn't fired half of them the way he should have a long time ago, starting with Jake Sullivan.