Like, as much as you say "I don't know why you're giving the Afghan government a pass", I don't know how you read the reports of us troops guarding opium so that it can be sold to the taliban and give them a pass
I wouldn’t give that a pass either. That’s unambiguously bad.
It also doesn’t change anything about the nature of their government and how it failed them.
Again, what government? You mean the one established by elections put on my an occupying force with rampant voter fraud that led to widespread corruption?
So your argument against me saying the Afghanistan Government was a routine failure is that the Afghanistan government was a routine failure?
Or are you implying that they were only corrupt because of us and if they had actually tried to do right at any point in the last two decades we would have stopped them from trying?
Like, as much as you say "I don't know why you're giving the Afghan government a pass", I don't know how you read the reports of us troops guarding opium so that it can be sold to the taliban and give them a pass
I wouldn’t give that a pass either. That’s unambiguously bad.
It also doesn’t change anything about the nature of their government and how it failed them.
Again, what government? You mean the one established by elections put on my an occupying force with rampant voter fraud that led to widespread corruption?
So your argument against me saying the Afghanistan Government was a routine failure is that the Afghanistan government was a routine failure?
Or are you implying that they were only corrupt because of us and if they had actually tried to do right at any point in the last two decades we would have stopped them from trying?
The US is directly responsible for the existence of the Afghanistan government. They literally established it.
so Biden just said that the optimal solution that he was hoping for was that after the US left there would be an increasingly bloody civil war, with Afghans murdering Afghans for years to come. And he was shocked, surprised and saddened when the war came to an end peacefully, before the US imposed time table of a withdrawal by (initially) September 11th, 2021, when he was still planning on having an America First anniversary. What a trash speech, victim blaming alongside vague promises of refugee support which ultimately will be more of the same current bloody chaos with even more US troops arriving to 'help' the situation
...
Holy fucking shit, man! In what possible world could you get that read out of his speech? I recognize that there are people on this forum that believe Biden to be a literal war criminal with more blood on his hands than those who really were tried for war criminals, and would like nothing more for him to be in the hague and for [insert politician here] to be in charge instead. But how the fuck can you equate what you just said to what he actually delivered in his speech?
This is not an idle question. This thread and the sniping in it has made me almost to the point of suicidal today and yet I've been fighting back exploding about the hot takes I see posted on here, mostly out of helplessness. So I would appreciate it, for my mental health and the health of others following along, if you would post exact quotes of Biden and how they translate into what you just said.
You don't have to, of course. This is the internet, no one is beholden to anyone else. You owe me nothing. But for fuck's sake. Come down off your high horse for one fucking day and try to be empathetic to others who don't see eye to eye with you, you silly fucking goose.
Biden expressed disappointment that the Afghan National Security Forces surrendered in most confrontations rather than continuing to fight.
Zavian's take on his meaning is... uncharitable. But there's a germ of a point in there that I agree with. Everyone was shocked and appalled at the mass surrenders and the relative lack of resistance to the Taliban conquest. But part of me felt relieved. Because I thought that we would see a much slower Taliban victory, or possibility a stalemated civil war. I feared that urban warfare and sieges and widespread destruction of the countryside might occur over another year or multiple years of civil war.
So the war ending in a couple months with only a handful of bloody battles and most cities being spared from the fighting was not the worst outcome, in my view, even if Taliban rule is in itself a bad outcome.
So we're pissed over the US leaving the Afghanis to the Taliban but applauding the Afghan army for doing the same.
surely you can understand the differences between things
We’re expected to fight for their country but the idea they should do the same without us is offensive?
They have had 20 years. If they want to roll over and let the Taliban in that’s fine. But it’s not our fault they chose to do it.
At worst it’s our fault for assuming they wouldn’t.
Its our fault for, somehow, spending 20 years and god knows how many dollars on the country and still leaving them with nothing they want to fight for.
How some of you are just giving the Afghanistan government a fucking pass to this degree is ludicrous.
I guess they were just the plucky underdog government that did the gosh darn best they could in the face of the big ol bad United States that’s always got to be wrong.
Like they bear no responsibility for their own rampant corruption and criminal activity. For how they abused their relationship with the US for the profit of a few while also undermining us where they could benefit there as well.
A collection of crooks with zero interest in solidifying anything representing a unified country or a culture that people would feel they could fight on for on its own merit without us.
It’s not our responsibility to do that for them without literally just annexing the country and setting up shop with total control over all aspects of its citizens lives, rewriting all of their laws and governments as we see fit.
We kept the Taliban at bay for 20 years and their government failed them to such a degree that just the psychological damage of knowing we were leaving caused everything to start crumbling well before we actually left.
The idea that their government isn’t truly responsible to their own people is a fucking joke.
That's how it is in an occupied nation, Viskod. The local government isn't truly responsible for the people living there. The occupying force is. Any sins committed by the Afghan government, whether through deliberate malice or callous neglect, also the sins of the United States military who were there and saw these sins occur and thought them unimportant enough to actually intervene and remove those under whose ostensible leadership those sins occurred.
I just find this to be an interpretation of our relationship to them at the political level that is just entirely unrealistic.
You expect the US military to just summarily, extralegally, remove their head of state?
See this is part of the problem. The US wanted to pretend that they where not an occupying power, so they created this puppet government and pretended it was an equal partner. In reality it existed and operated solely on US sufferance.
Because they wanted a willing puppet, they got a government that was responsive to the US desires first and the needs of the Afghan people at best a distant third. They could do as they wanted as long as they gave the US the free hand. Once the accountability towards the Afghan people as whole was lost, so was any desire to actually serve the Afghan people.
The US overlooked the massive corruption as "internal Afghan issues", when they root cause of those issues was that the Afghan government was never held responsible by the one entity that could hold them responsible: The USA.
No regular government could ignore its own people and steal as blatantly as the Afghan government could without some form of revolt.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
so Biden just said that the optimal solution that he was hoping for was that after the US left there would be an increasingly bloody civil war, with Afghans murdering Afghans for years to come. And he was shocked, surprised and saddened when the war came to an end peacefully, before the US imposed time table of a withdrawal by (initially) September 11th, 2021, when he was still planning on having an America First anniversary. What a trash speech, victim blaming alongside vague promises of refugee support which ultimately will be more of the same current bloody chaos with even more US troops arriving to 'help' the situation
...
Holy fucking shit, man! In what possible world could you get that read out of his speech? I recognize that there are people on this forum that believe Biden to be a literal war criminal with more blood on his hands than those who really were tried for war criminals, and would like nothing more for him to be in the hague and for [insert politician here] to be in charge instead. But how the fuck can you equate what you just said to what he actually delivered in his speech?
This is not an idle question. This thread and the sniping in it has made me almost to the point of suicidal today and yet I've been fighting back exploding about the hot takes I see posted on here, mostly out of helplessness. So I would appreciate it, for my mental health and the health of others following along, if you would post exact quotes of Biden and how they translate into what you just said.
You don't have to, of course. This is the internet, no one is beholden to anyone else. You owe me nothing. But for fuck's sake. Come down off your high horse for one fucking day and try to be empathetic to others who don't see eye to eye with you, you silly fucking goose.
Biden expressed disappointment that the Afghan National Security Forces surrendered in most confrontations rather than continuing to fight.
Zavian's take on his meaning is... uncharitable. But there's a germ of a point in there that I agree with. Everyone was shocked and appalled at the mass surrenders and the relative lack of resistance to the Taliban conquest. But part of me felt relieved. Because I thought that we would see a much slower Taliban victory, or possibility a stalemated civil war. I feared that urban warfare and sieges and widespread destruction of the countryside might occur over another year or multiple years of civil war.
So the war ending in a couple months with only a handful of bloody battles and most cities being spared from the fighting was not the worst outcome, in my view, even if Taliban rule is in itself a bad outcome.
So we're pissed over the US leaving the Afghanis to the Taliban but applauding the Afghan army for doing the same.
surely you can understand the differences between things
We’re expected to fight for their country but the idea they should do the same without us is offensive?
They have had 20 years. If they want to roll over and let the Taliban in that’s fine. But it’s not our fault they chose to do it.
At worst it’s our fault for assuming they wouldn’t.
Its our fault for, somehow, spending 20 years and god knows how many dollars on the country and still leaving them with nothing they want to fight for.
How some of you are just giving the Afghanistan government a fucking pass to this degree is ludicrous.
I guess they were just the plucky underdog government that did the gosh darn best they could in the face of the big ol bad United States that’s always got to be wrong.
Like they bear no responsibility for their own rampant corruption and criminal activity. For how they abused their relationship with the US for the profit of a few while also undermining us where they could benefit there as well.
A collection of crooks with zero interest in solidifying anything representing a unified country or a culture that people would feel they could fight on for on its own merit without us.
It’s not our responsibility to do that for them without literally just annexing the country and setting up shop with total control over all aspects of its citizens lives, rewriting all of their laws and governments as we see fit.
We kept the Taliban at bay for 20 years and their government failed them to such a degree that just the psychological damage of knowing we were leaving caused everything to start crumbling well before we actually left.
The idea that their government isn’t truly responsible to their own people is a fucking joke.
That's how it is in an occupied nation, Viskod. The local government isn't truly responsible for the people living there. The occupying force is. Any sins committed by the Afghan government, whether through deliberate malice or callous neglect, also the sins of the United States military who were there and saw these sins occur and thought them unimportant enough to actually intervene and remove those under whose ostensible leadership those sins occurred.
I just find this to be an interpretation of our relationship to them at the political level that is just entirely unrealistic.
You expect the US military to just summarily, extralegally, remove their head of state?
See this is part of the problem. The US wanted to pretend that they where not an occupying power, so they created this puppet government and pretended it was an equal partner. In reality it existed and operated solely on US sufferance.
Because they wanted a willing puppet, they got a government that was responsive to the US desires first and the needs of the Afghan people at best a distant third. They could do as they wanted as long as they gave the US the free hand. Once the accountability towards the Afghan people as whole was lost, so was any desire to actually serve the Afghan people.
The US overlooked the massive corruption as "internal Afghan issues", when they root cause of those issues was that the Afghan government was never held responsible by the one entity that could hold them responsible: The USA.
No regular government could ignore its own people and steal as blatantly as the Afghan government could without some form of revolt.
Regular governments do that shit all the time.
And considering they literally surrendered to another political power in the country at the speed of humvee, I'm pretty sure "some sort of revolt" is what they got.
so Biden just said that the optimal solution that he was hoping for was that after the US left there would be an increasingly bloody civil war, with Afghans murdering Afghans for years to come. And he was shocked, surprised and saddened when the war came to an end peacefully, before the US imposed time table of a withdrawal by (initially) September 11th, 2021, when he was still planning on having an America First anniversary. What a trash speech, victim blaming alongside vague promises of refugee support which ultimately will be more of the same current bloody chaos with even more US troops arriving to 'help' the situation
...
Holy fucking shit, man! In what possible world could you get that read out of his speech? I recognize that there are people on this forum that believe Biden to be a literal war criminal with more blood on his hands than those who really were tried for war criminals, and would like nothing more for him to be in the hague and for [insert politician here] to be in charge instead. But how the fuck can you equate what you just said to what he actually delivered in his speech?
This is not an idle question. This thread and the sniping in it has made me almost to the point of suicidal today and yet I've been fighting back exploding about the hot takes I see posted on here, mostly out of helplessness. So I would appreciate it, for my mental health and the health of others following along, if you would post exact quotes of Biden and how they translate into what you just said.
You don't have to, of course. This is the internet, no one is beholden to anyone else. You owe me nothing. But for fuck's sake. Come down off your high horse for one fucking day and try to be empathetic to others who don't see eye to eye with you, you silly fucking goose.
Biden expressed disappointment that the Afghan National Security Forces surrendered in most confrontations rather than continuing to fight.
Zavian's take on his meaning is... uncharitable. But there's a germ of a point in there that I agree with. Everyone was shocked and appalled at the mass surrenders and the relative lack of resistance to the Taliban conquest. But part of me felt relieved. Because I thought that we would see a much slower Taliban victory, or possibility a stalemated civil war. I feared that urban warfare and sieges and widespread destruction of the countryside might occur over another year or multiple years of civil war.
So the war ending in a couple months with only a handful of bloody battles and most cities being spared from the fighting was not the worst outcome, in my view, even if Taliban rule is in itself a bad outcome.
So we're pissed over the US leaving the Afghanis to the Taliban but applauding the Afghan army for doing the same.
surely you can understand the differences between things
We’re expected to fight for their country but the idea they should do the same without us is offensive?
They have had 20 years. If they want to roll over and let the Taliban in that’s fine. But it’s not our fault they chose to do it.
At worst it’s our fault for assuming they wouldn’t.
Its our fault for, somehow, spending 20 years and god knows how many dollars on the country and still leaving them with nothing they want to fight for.
How some of you are just giving the Afghanistan government a fucking pass to this degree is ludicrous.
I guess they were just the plucky underdog government that did the gosh darn best they could in the face of the big ol bad United States that’s always got to be wrong.
Like they bear no responsibility for their own rampant corruption and criminal activity. For how they abused their relationship with the US for the profit of a few while also undermining us where they could benefit there as well.
A collection of crooks with zero interest in solidifying anything representing a unified country or a culture that people would feel they could fight on for on its own merit without us.
It’s not our responsibility to do that for them without literally just annexing the country and setting up shop with total control over all aspects of its citizens lives, rewriting all of their laws and governments as we see fit.
We kept the Taliban at bay for 20 years and their government failed them to such a degree that just the psychological damage of knowing we were leaving caused everything to start crumbling well before we actually left.
The idea that their government isn’t truly responsible to their own people is a fucking joke.
That's how it is in an occupied nation, Viskod. The local government isn't truly responsible for the people living there. The occupying force is. Any sins committed by the Afghan government, whether through deliberate malice or callous neglect, also the sins of the United States military who were there and saw these sins occur and thought them unimportant enough to actually intervene and remove those under whose ostensible leadership those sins occurred.
I just find this to be an interpretation of our relationship to them at the political level that is just entirely unrealistic.
You expect the US military to just summarily, extralegally, remove their head of state?
See this is part of the problem. The US wanted to pretend that they where not an occupying power, so they created this puppet government and pretended it was an equal partner. In reality it existed and operated solely on US sufferance.
Because they wanted a willing puppet, they got a government that was responsive to the US desires first and the needs of the Afghan people at best a distant third. They could do as they wanted as long as they gave the US the free hand. Once the accountability towards the Afghan people as whole was lost, so was any desire to actually serve the Afghan people.
The US overlooked the massive corruption as "internal Afghan issues", when they root cause of those issues was that the Afghan government was never held responsible by the one entity that could hold them responsible: The USA.
No regular government could ignore its own people and steal as blatantly as the Afghan government could without some form of revolt.
Regular governments do that shit all the time.
And considering they literally surrendered to another political power in the country at the speed of humvee, I'm pretty sure "some sort of revolt" is what they got.
Which indicates that they weren't ever really the legitimate government of Afghanistan to begin with rather than a sock puppet propped up by US guns.
so Biden just said that the optimal solution that he was hoping for was that after the US left there would be an increasingly bloody civil war, with Afghans murdering Afghans for years to come. And he was shocked, surprised and saddened when the war came to an end peacefully, before the US imposed time table of a withdrawal by (initially) September 11th, 2021, when he was still planning on having an America First anniversary. What a trash speech, victim blaming alongside vague promises of refugee support which ultimately will be more of the same current bloody chaos with even more US troops arriving to 'help' the situation
...
Holy fucking shit, man! In what possible world could you get that read out of his speech? I recognize that there are people on this forum that believe Biden to be a literal war criminal with more blood on his hands than those who really were tried for war criminals, and would like nothing more for him to be in the hague and for [insert politician here] to be in charge instead. But how the fuck can you equate what you just said to what he actually delivered in his speech?
This is not an idle question. This thread and the sniping in it has made me almost to the point of suicidal today and yet I've been fighting back exploding about the hot takes I see posted on here, mostly out of helplessness. So I would appreciate it, for my mental health and the health of others following along, if you would post exact quotes of Biden and how they translate into what you just said.
You don't have to, of course. This is the internet, no one is beholden to anyone else. You owe me nothing. But for fuck's sake. Come down off your high horse for one fucking day and try to be empathetic to others who don't see eye to eye with you, you silly fucking goose.
Biden expressed disappointment that the Afghan National Security Forces surrendered in most confrontations rather than continuing to fight.
Zavian's take on his meaning is... uncharitable. But there's a germ of a point in there that I agree with. Everyone was shocked and appalled at the mass surrenders and the relative lack of resistance to the Taliban conquest. But part of me felt relieved. Because I thought that we would see a much slower Taliban victory, or possibility a stalemated civil war. I feared that urban warfare and sieges and widespread destruction of the countryside might occur over another year or multiple years of civil war.
So the war ending in a couple months with only a handful of bloody battles and most cities being spared from the fighting was not the worst outcome, in my view, even if Taliban rule is in itself a bad outcome.
So we're pissed over the US leaving the Afghanis to the Taliban but applauding the Afghan army for doing the same.
surely you can understand the differences between things
We’re expected to fight for their country but the idea they should do the same without us is offensive?
They have had 20 years. If they want to roll over and let the Taliban in that’s fine. But it’s not our fault they chose to do it.
At worst it’s our fault for assuming they wouldn’t.
Its our fault for, somehow, spending 20 years and god knows how many dollars on the country and still leaving them with nothing they want to fight for.
How some of you are just giving the Afghanistan government a fucking pass to this degree is ludicrous.
I guess they were just the plucky underdog government that did the gosh darn best they could in the face of the big ol bad United States that’s always got to be wrong.
Like they bear no responsibility for their own rampant corruption and criminal activity. For how they abused their relationship with the US for the profit of a few while also undermining us where they could benefit there as well.
A collection of crooks with zero interest in solidifying anything representing a unified country or a culture that people would feel they could fight on for on its own merit without us.
It’s not our responsibility to do that for them without literally just annexing the country and setting up shop with total control over all aspects of its citizens lives, rewriting all of their laws and governments as we see fit.
We kept the Taliban at bay for 20 years and their government failed them to such a degree that just the psychological damage of knowing we were leaving caused everything to start crumbling well before we actually left.
The idea that their government isn’t truly responsible to their own people is a fucking joke.
That's how it is in an occupied nation, Viskod. The local government isn't truly responsible for the people living there. The occupying force is. Any sins committed by the Afghan government, whether through deliberate malice or callous neglect, also the sins of the United States military who were there and saw these sins occur and thought them unimportant enough to actually intervene and remove those under whose ostensible leadership those sins occurred.
I just find this to be an interpretation of our relationship to them at the political level that is just entirely unrealistic.
You expect the US military to just summarily, extralegally, remove their head of state?
See this is part of the problem. The US wanted to pretend that they where not an occupying power, so they created this puppet government and pretended it was an equal partner. In reality it existed and operated solely on US sufferance.
Because they wanted a willing puppet, they got a government that was responsive to the US desires first and the needs of the Afghan people at best a distant third. They could do as they wanted as long as they gave the US the free hand. Once the accountability towards the Afghan people as whole was lost, so was any desire to actually serve the Afghan people.
The US overlooked the massive corruption as "internal Afghan issues", when they root cause of those issues was that the Afghan government was never held responsible by the one entity that could hold them responsible: The USA.
No regular government could ignore its own people and steal as blatantly as the Afghan government could without some form of revolt.
Regular governments do that shit all the time.
And considering they literally surrendered to another political power in the country at the speed of humvee, I'm pretty sure "some sort of revolt" is what they got.
Which indicates that they weren't ever really the legitimate government of Afghanistan to begin with rather than a sock puppet propped up by US guns.
That's an interesting take on why government fall.
I think there's probably a few more nuanced options then that for why this sort of thing happens.
Boebert would probably defend her tweets as for the lulz, but I think it's more of a dog whistle to an increasingly radical far right that thinks authoritarian ruthlessly violent religious fundamentalism is a really great idea and if the Taliban can do it, why can't they? Of course they would side with Russia or the Taliban over the libs.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
I'm having trouble squaring "imperialism bad" with "BUT ALSO the United States should have just summarily executed foreign nationals in positions of power it thought were bad at their job"
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I think the idea that the US didn't want an Afghan government that was competent, or at least extistent, is a bit silly.
All im really hearing here is that the only acceptable way to go given we were already there and can't undo the original fuckup of going there in the first place would have been to go full imperialism and make Afghanistan a U.S. territory
Like, as much as you say "I don't know why you're giving the Afghan government a pass", I don't know how you read the reports of us troops guarding opium so that it can be sold to the taliban and give them a pass
I wouldn’t give that a pass either. That’s unambiguously bad.
It also doesn’t change anything about the nature of their government and how it failed them.
Again, what government? You mean the one established by elections put on my an occupying force with rampant voter fraud that led to widespread corruption?
So your argument against me saying the Afghanistan Government was a routine failure is that the Afghanistan government was a routine failure?
Or are you implying that they were only corrupt because of us and if they had actually tried to do right at any point in the last two decades we would have stopped them from trying?
I think the Afghan government deserves plenty of condemnation, Afghans themselves are providing plenty of it. But given that the US established, helped shape, defended and otherwise aided and influenced that government for two decades, the US's share of responsibility for the situation is huge. The problem was not that some corrupt individuals happened to get in power and ruin the system the US tried to put in place, but that the system was structurally broken, so that it bred corruption, among other problems.
I'm having trouble squaring "imperialism bad" with "BUT ALSO the United States should have just summarily executed foreign nationals in positions of power it thought were bad at their job"
that's because you were making up what people are saying
I think the idea that the US didn't want an Afghan government that was competent, or at least extistent, is a bit silly.
The US wanted an Afghan government that was compliant with US interests and values, which has fundamental conflicts with it being an Afghan government that has the unwavering support of the actual people of Afghanistan and can actually stand on its own two feet.
I think the idea that the US didn't want an Afghan government that was competent, or at least extistent, is a bit silly.
Like literally the entire plan for this pullout was that the Afghan government would be competent enough and at least committed enough to being a government to let the US leave the country before falling apart.
Rest assured when we say "The united states wanted a competent government" we are also saying "The united states military apparatus was wholly unequipped and incapable of creating one"
All im really hearing here is that the only acceptable way to go given we were already there and can't undo the original fuckup of going there in the first place would have been to go full imperialism and make Afghanistan a U.S. territory
To be clear, what I actually believe is that we could never have prevented this situation from happening given what we've already done, and the most we can actually do now is attempt to prevent other outside countries and donors from attempting to bolster the Taliban.
If Afghanistan wants its own government other than the Taliban, then it will need to have its own counter-revolution with minimal outside involvement. It was never going to lead to a lasting peace any other way.
I think the idea that the US didn't want an Afghan government that was competent, or at least extistent, is a bit silly.
Reportedly part of the reason the ANA collapsed is it was trained and armed like an American combined arms force heavily reliant on air power we never set them up to provide for themselves.
I think the idea that the US didn't want an Afghan government that was competent, or at least extistent, is a bit silly.
Reportedly part of the reason the ANA collapsed is it was trained and armed like an American combined arms force heavily reliant on air power we never set them up to provide for themselves.
So....
That seems at odds with what actually happened since it implies there was even the consideration of fighting.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
I'm having trouble squaring "imperialism bad" with "BUT ALSO the United States should have just summarily executed foreign nationals in positions of power it thought were bad at their job"
that's because you were making up what people are saying
How else am I to have interpreted your response? I'm genuinely asking.
so Biden just said that the optimal solution that he was hoping for was that after the US left there would be an increasingly bloody civil war, with Afghans murdering Afghans for years to come. And he was shocked, surprised and saddened when the war came to an end peacefully, before the US imposed time table of a withdrawal by (initially) September 11th, 2021, when he was still planning on having an America First anniversary. What a trash speech, victim blaming alongside vague promises of refugee support which ultimately will be more of the same current bloody chaos with even more US troops arriving to 'help' the situation
...
Holy fucking shit, man! In what possible world could you get that read out of his speech? I recognize that there are people on this forum that believe Biden to be a literal war criminal with more blood on his hands than those who really were tried for war criminals, and would like nothing more for him to be in the hague and for [insert politician here] to be in charge instead. But how the fuck can you equate what you just said to what he actually delivered in his speech?
This is not an idle question. This thread and the sniping in it has made me almost to the point of suicidal today and yet I've been fighting back exploding about the hot takes I see posted on here, mostly out of helplessness. So I would appreciate it, for my mental health and the health of others following along, if you would post exact quotes of Biden and how they translate into what you just said.
You don't have to, of course. This is the internet, no one is beholden to anyone else. You owe me nothing. But for fuck's sake. Come down off your high horse for one fucking day and try to be empathetic to others who don't see eye to eye with you, you silly fucking goose.
Biden expressed disappointment that the Afghan National Security Forces surrendered in most confrontations rather than continuing to fight.
Zavian's take on his meaning is... uncharitable. But there's a germ of a point in there that I agree with. Everyone was shocked and appalled at the mass surrenders and the relative lack of resistance to the Taliban conquest. But part of me felt relieved. Because I thought that we would see a much slower Taliban victory, or possibility a stalemated civil war. I feared that urban warfare and sieges and widespread destruction of the countryside might occur over another year or multiple years of civil war.
So the war ending in a couple months with only a handful of bloody battles and most cities being spared from the fighting was not the worst outcome, in my view, even if Taliban rule is in itself a bad outcome.
So we're pissed over the US leaving the Afghanis to the Taliban but applauding the Afghan army for doing the same.
surely you can understand the differences between things
We’re expected to fight for their country but the idea they should do the same without us is offensive?
They have had 20 years. If they want to roll over and let the Taliban in that’s fine. But it’s not our fault they chose to do it.
At worst it’s our fault for assuming they wouldn’t.
Its our fault for, somehow, spending 20 years and god knows how many dollars on the country and still leaving them with nothing they want to fight for.
How some of you are just giving the Afghanistan government a fucking pass to this degree is ludicrous.
I guess they were just the plucky underdog government that did the gosh darn best they could in the face of the big ol bad United States that’s always got to be wrong.
Like they bear no responsibility for their own rampant corruption and criminal activity. For how they abused their relationship with the US for the profit of a few while also undermining us where they could benefit there as well.
A collection of crooks with zero interest in solidifying anything representing a unified country or a culture that people would feel they could fight on for on its own merit without us.
It’s not our responsibility to do that for them without literally just annexing the country and setting up shop with total control over all aspects of its citizens lives, rewriting all of their laws and governments as we see fit.
We kept the Taliban at bay for 20 years and their government failed them to such a degree that just the psychological damage of knowing we were leaving caused everything to start crumbling well before we actually left.
The idea that their government isn’t truly responsible to their own people is a fucking joke.
That's how it is in an occupied nation, Viskod. The local government isn't truly responsible for the people living there. The occupying force is. The local government will always be subservient to the occupying force for as long as that occupying force remains. Any sins committed by the Afghan government, whether through deliberate malice or callous neglect, also the sins of the United States military who were there and saw these sins occur and thought them unimportant enough to actually intervene and remove those under whose ostensible leadership those sins occurred.
Is heavy-handed colonialism good or bad? Because I feel extremely confident that if the United States had unilaterally and directly removed a duly elected official because they were manifestly corrupt and inept it would have been decried as an example of propping up puppet government to serve our imperialist interests. But here you seem to be advocating for exactly that. Which is it?
I was stating the reality of the situation. It's disingenuous to the extreme to suggest that I was "advocating" for it.
Couple things I was reminded of doing some listening/reading on the commute. First When the US Surged troops into Afghanistan under Obama, that was a deployment of 130k coalition forces. That is the baseline troop level we would have needed to blunt the Taliban again(because without the ceasefire/treaty they were going to make a military push), which came with about 400 US soldiers and 400 Afghan forces plus another 2000 Afghan civilians killed each year.
...We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.
We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.
...Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."
We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? But we're trying to do that, and we are doing that with thousands of rationalizations....
Which just makes the Yes votes in 2001/2002 even more inexplicable and damning.
I think the idea that the US didn't want an Afghan government that was competent, or at least extistent, is a bit silly.
Reportedly part of the reason the ANA collapsed is it was trained and armed like an American combined arms force heavily reliant on air power we never set them up to provide for themselves.
So....
That seems at odds with what actually happened since it implies there was even the consideration of fighting.
The American military pulled back and left them without the close air support and resupply theyd trained and designed around so course they collapsed without considering a real fight.
We didnt build a real military, we trained some colonial auxiliaries
I'm having trouble squaring "imperialism bad" with "BUT ALSO the United States should have just summarily executed foreign nationals in positions of power it thought were bad at their job"
that's because you were making up what people are saying
How else would am I to have interpreted your response? I'm genuinely asking.
It’s entirely too much to quote fucking white mans burden
It’s twenty times entirely too much to quote it directly at a person who fled Mogadishu
I mean, its only been, what 150ish years? But No No, this time it'll work. WE HAVE TO DO IT!
America only cares about Africa when they can blame the problem on colonization and absolve themselves of white guilt.
Your words prove it
It seems like you're arguing for indefinite occupation of every destabilized part of Africa and the Middle East to maintain order? And isn't that just recolonization?
Hard to maintain an order that isn't there, that was the Afghanistan problem while fear of Saddam was Iraq's order.
Setting aside your colonization bogeyman, which China and the world bank have already been doing. Right now, the events going on in Ethiopea will need months of bodies floating down river and more leaked massacre data before there is a US response. Are you really comfortable waiting for 100,000 dead before the US does something with teeth?
Not to mention there are infrastructure pitfalls and shortcomings the army corps of engineers could solve in a dozen different flavors, especially ones within reach of local governments to maintain.
America is not being lead to be a military or political colonial power but it has become a cultural and economic colonial power. Children are buying American music to speak American English to communicate in American memes to buy American swag. America is profiting from this and needs to reinvest in these nations of the global south, because from a moral and national security perspective, the rot we've condoned and financed in these nations has followed us home before and will follow us home again.
Even if you do not America getting involved in Africa or Asia, we should still do something about the thousands of people getting hacked up in central and south America to support our cocaine addiction.
My understanding is that it was fairly commonly thought for the last several years that the Afghan military was regarded as something akin to "an excellent non-conventional force that we turned into a dogshit conventional force", and part of that is a reliance on equipment and vehicles for support that were simply not going to happen in the Afghanistan environment, either because of their being unsuited for it or straight-up not provided.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
so Biden just said that the optimal solution that he was hoping for was that after the US left there would be an increasingly bloody civil war, with Afghans murdering Afghans for years to come. And he was shocked, surprised and saddened when the war came to an end peacefully, before the US imposed time table of a withdrawal by (initially) September 11th, 2021, when he was still planning on having an America First anniversary. What a trash speech, victim blaming alongside vague promises of refugee support which ultimately will be more of the same current bloody chaos with even more US troops arriving to 'help' the situation
...
Holy fucking shit, man! In what possible world could you get that read out of his speech? I recognize that there are people on this forum that believe Biden to be a literal war criminal with more blood on his hands than those who really were tried for war criminals, and would like nothing more for him to be in the hague and for [insert politician here] to be in charge instead. But how the fuck can you equate what you just said to what he actually delivered in his speech?
This is not an idle question. This thread and the sniping in it has made me almost to the point of suicidal today and yet I've been fighting back exploding about the hot takes I see posted on here, mostly out of helplessness. So I would appreciate it, for my mental health and the health of others following along, if you would post exact quotes of Biden and how they translate into what you just said.
You don't have to, of course. This is the internet, no one is beholden to anyone else. You owe me nothing. But for fuck's sake. Come down off your high horse for one fucking day and try to be empathetic to others who don't see eye to eye with you, you silly fucking goose.
Biden expressed disappointment that the Afghan National Security Forces surrendered in most confrontations rather than continuing to fight.
Zavian's take on his meaning is... uncharitable. But there's a germ of a point in there that I agree with. Everyone was shocked and appalled at the mass surrenders and the relative lack of resistance to the Taliban conquest. But part of me felt relieved. Because I thought that we would see a much slower Taliban victory, or possibility a stalemated civil war. I feared that urban warfare and sieges and widespread destruction of the countryside might occur over another year or multiple years of civil war.
So the war ending in a couple months with only a handful of bloody battles and most cities being spared from the fighting was not the worst outcome, in my view, even if Taliban rule is in itself a bad outcome.
So we're pissed over the US leaving the Afghanis to the Taliban but applauding the Afghan army for doing the same.
surely you can understand the differences between things
We’re expected to fight for their country but the idea they should do the same without us is offensive?
They have had 20 years. If they want to roll over and let the Taliban in that’s fine. But it’s not our fault they chose to do it.
At worst it’s our fault for assuming they wouldn’t.
Its our fault for, somehow, spending 20 years and god knows how many dollars on the country and still leaving them with nothing they want to fight for.
How some of you are just giving the Afghanistan government a fucking pass to this degree is ludicrous.
I guess they were just the plucky underdog government that did the gosh darn best they could in the face of the big ol bad United States that’s always got to be wrong.
Like they bear no responsibility for their own rampant corruption and criminal activity. For how they abused their relationship with the US for the profit of a few while also undermining us where they could benefit there as well.
A collection of crooks with zero interest in solidifying anything representing a unified country or a culture that people would feel they could fight on for on its own merit without us.
It’s not our responsibility to do that for them without literally just annexing the country and setting up shop with total control over all aspects of its citizens lives, rewriting all of their laws and governments as we see fit.
We kept the Taliban at bay for 20 years and their government failed them to such a degree that just the psychological damage of knowing we were leaving caused everything to start crumbling well before we actually left.
The idea that their government isn’t truly responsible to their own people is a fucking joke.
That's how it is in an occupied nation, Viskod. The local government isn't truly responsible for the people living there. The occupying force is. The local government will always be subservient to the occupying force for as long as that occupying force remains. Any sins committed by the Afghan government, whether through deliberate malice or callous neglect, also the sins of the United States military who were there and saw these sins occur and thought them unimportant enough to actually intervene and remove those under whose ostensible leadership those sins occurred.
Is heavy-handed colonialism good or bad? Because I feel extremely confident that if the United States had unilaterally and directly removed a duly elected official because they were manifestly corrupt and inept it would have been decried as an example of propping up puppet government to serve our imperialist interests. But here you seem to be advocating for exactly that. Which is it?
I was stating the reality of the situation. It's disingenuous to the extreme to suggest that I was "advocating" for it.
Okay. Given that the invasion in 2001 happened, what would you advocate for?
Anyone who wonders how Kerry / America / whomever could have supported the invasion in October of 2001 either was too young or has a poor memory of that time.
America as a whole, with very few exceptions (dont conflate Iraq in 2003 which still had support but less) was out for blood. We watched the towers fall in real time and went collectively insane for a while.
For those looking for places to help, I’d suggest looking at MADRE’s Emergency and Disaster Relief Fund (or MADRE in general). I’m not really comfortable doing a full-on pitch here, but they’re a good organization that’s been focused for years on a lot of the issues re: women’s rights and lives that people have expressed concern about here. They do it by working with local partners, so it’s not an outsider-led effort with the problems that can bring.
Just one organization to consider, but its also decent starting place to find similar organizations.
For what it’s worth to other vets here, I found charities working in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other areas when I was in the military and initially working through my own issues with guilt and moral culpability. Donations aren’t like, indulgences or panaceas, but they can be a small thing to hold on to while you figure out more complicated questions.
Can we put this in the next opening post? Could jave used this data days ago before my panic attack.
Anyone who wonders how Kerry / America / whomever could have supported the invasion in October of 2001 either was too young or has a poor memory of that time.
America as a whole, with very few exceptions (dont conflate Iraq in 2003 which still had support but less) was out for blood. We watched the towers fall in real time and went collectively insane for a while.
There were absolutely massive anti war protests and speech prior to and throughout both wars that were entirely ignored and subsequently memory holed.
As an American, just saying ,ever since shit as ss McNamara and Vietnam, we haven't learned shit at all.
Just send the poor Americans out to get eviscerated, ordered to neutralize the poor citizens of our, "enemies countries", instead of hitting the head of the snakes head on..(Russia for Vietnam, Saudi Arabia for Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.) , But we can't because of "our corporate overlord's behest and relationships to those countries. Hell,even the first time against the Kingdom of Hawaii, at the behest of the "Dole Cooperation" whispering in Teddy Roosevelt's ear, to tame the ungrateful savages, for daring to challenge the U.S, (surrogate to England's and Europeans in particular.) Has the. Been our SOP.
I just hope all foreign countries now look at us with a side eye,because we truly don't give two fucks about the natives anywhere and willing ready to throw them to the wolves, when that haven't , "done anything for the United States lately.".
Like, as much as you say "I don't know why you're giving the Afghan government a pass", I don't know how you read the reports of us troops guarding opium so that it can be sold to the taliban and give them a pass
I wouldn’t give that a pass either. That’s unambiguously bad.
It also doesn’t change anything about the nature of their government and how it failed them.
Again, what government? You mean the one established by elections put on my an occupying force with rampant voter fraud that led to widespread corruption?
So your argument against me saying the Afghanistan Government was a routine failure is that the Afghanistan government was a routine failure?
Or are you implying that they were only corrupt because of us and if they had actually tried to do right at any point in the last two decades we would have stopped them from trying?
The US is directly responsible for the existence of the Afghanistan government. They literally established it.
Poor things. That was 20 years ago and they haven’t had any real agency since.
Anyone who wonders how Kerry / America / whomever could have supported the invasion in October of 2001 either was too young or has a poor memory of that time.
America as a whole, with very few exceptions (dont conflate Iraq in 2003 which still had support but less) was out for blood. We watched the towers fall in real time and went collectively insane for a while.
Eh I was a burnout highschool freshman and even I could recognize how fuckin bad of an idea this was from the outset and that it was basically just us debasing ourselves in a pretty blatant wish for genocide. I could see why it was happening, and understand the failings of my countrymen, but it was never really able to be condoned. Bottom to top our every response to 9/11 was wrong, and mostly just handed the long game to the attackers.
Anyone who wonders how Kerry / America / whomever could have supported the invasion in October of 2001 either was too young or has a poor memory of that time.
America as a whole, with very few exceptions (dont conflate Iraq in 2003 which still had support but less) was out for blood. We watched the towers fall in real time and went collectively insane for a while.
eg -
In October 2001, a poll by CNN/Gallup/USA Today indicated that about 88% of Americans backed military action in Afghanistan
And if you check the actual source it actually goes up from there in 2002.
Anyone who wonders how Kerry / America / whomever could have supported the invasion in October of 2001 either was too young or has a poor memory of that time.
America as a whole, with very few exceptions (dont conflate Iraq in 2003 which still had support but less) was out for blood. We watched the towers fall in real time and went collectively insane for a while.
Eh I was a burnout highschool freshman and even I could recognize how fuckin bad of an idea this was from the outset and that it was basically just us debasing ourselves in a pretty blatant wish for genocide. I could see why it was happening, and understand the failings of my countrymen, but it was never really able to be condoned. Bottom to top our every response to 9/11 was wrong, and mostly just handed the long game to the attackers.
I mean, okay? Grats on your foresight I guess? That doesn't really counter the argument which was that the vast majority of the country was definitely in favor of the US doing something after 9/11 happened.
Lord_Asmodeus on
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
American support for the invasion of Afghanistan was damn near 90% immediately after 9/11.
You can't get that many Americans to agree that ice cream or pizza tastes good.
Again, people are conflating 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 Iraq protests in most cases. There were some protests but hardly a massive upwelling of support about Afghanistan in particular.
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So your argument against me saying the Afghanistan Government was a routine failure is that the Afghanistan government was a routine failure?
Or are you implying that they were only corrupt because of us and if they had actually tried to do right at any point in the last two decades we would have stopped them from trying?
The US is directly responsible for the existence of the Afghanistan government. They literally established it.
See this is part of the problem. The US wanted to pretend that they where not an occupying power, so they created this puppet government and pretended it was an equal partner. In reality it existed and operated solely on US sufferance.
Because they wanted a willing puppet, they got a government that was responsive to the US desires first and the needs of the Afghan people at best a distant third. They could do as they wanted as long as they gave the US the free hand. Once the accountability towards the Afghan people as whole was lost, so was any desire to actually serve the Afghan people.
The US overlooked the massive corruption as "internal Afghan issues", when they root cause of those issues was that the Afghan government was never held responsible by the one entity that could hold them responsible: The USA.
No regular government could ignore its own people and steal as blatantly as the Afghan government could without some form of revolt.
Regular governments do that shit all the time.
And considering they literally surrendered to another political power in the country at the speed of humvee, I'm pretty sure "some sort of revolt" is what they got.
Which indicates that they weren't ever really the legitimate government of Afghanistan to begin with rather than a sock puppet propped up by US guns.
That's an interesting take on why government fall.
I think there's probably a few more nuanced options then that for why this sort of thing happens.
I think the Afghan government deserves plenty of condemnation, Afghans themselves are providing plenty of it. But given that the US established, helped shape, defended and otherwise aided and influenced that government for two decades, the US's share of responsibility for the situation is huge. The problem was not that some corrupt individuals happened to get in power and ruin the system the US tried to put in place, but that the system was structurally broken, so that it bred corruption, among other problems.
that's because you were making up what people are saying
The US wanted an Afghan government that was compliant with US interests and values, which has fundamental conflicts with it being an Afghan government that has the unwavering support of the actual people of Afghanistan and can actually stand on its own two feet.
Like literally the entire plan for this pullout was that the Afghan government would be competent enough and at least committed enough to being a government to let the US leave the country before falling apart.
Conversely, Esquire actually seems pretty up-and-up.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a37321709/joe-biden-afghanistan-speech/
To be clear, what I actually believe is that we could never have prevented this situation from happening given what we've already done, and the most we can actually do now is attempt to prevent other outside countries and donors from attempting to bolster the Taliban.
If Afghanistan wants its own government other than the Taliban, then it will need to have its own counter-revolution with minimal outside involvement. It was never going to lead to a lasting peace any other way.
Reportedly part of the reason the ANA collapsed is it was trained and armed like an American combined arms force heavily reliant on air power we never set them up to provide for themselves.
So....
That seems at odds with what actually happened since it implies there was even the consideration of fighting.
How else am I to have interpreted your response? I'm genuinely asking.
I was stating the reality of the situation. It's disingenuous to the extreme to suggest that I was "advocating" for it.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
And this quote
Which just makes the Yes votes in 2001/2002 even more inexplicable and damning.
The American military pulled back and left them without the close air support and resupply theyd trained and designed around so course they collapsed without considering a real fight.
We didnt build a real military, we trained some colonial auxiliaries
i am not darkprimus
Hard to maintain an order that isn't there, that was the Afghanistan problem while fear of Saddam was Iraq's order.
Setting aside your colonization bogeyman, which China and the world bank have already been doing. Right now, the events going on in Ethiopea will need months of bodies floating down river and more leaked massacre data before there is a US response. Are you really comfortable waiting for 100,000 dead before the US does something with teeth?
Not to mention there are infrastructure pitfalls and shortcomings the army corps of engineers could solve in a dozen different flavors, especially ones within reach of local governments to maintain.
America is not being lead to be a military or political colonial power but it has become a cultural and economic colonial power. Children are buying American music to speak American English to communicate in American memes to buy American swag. America is profiting from this and needs to reinvest in these nations of the global south, because from a moral and national security perspective, the rot we've condoned and financed in these nations has followed us home before and will follow us home again.
Even if you do not America getting involved in Africa or Asia, we should still do something about the thousands of people getting hacked up in central and south America to support our cocaine addiction.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Okay. Given that the invasion in 2001 happened, what would you advocate for?
America as a whole, with very few exceptions (dont conflate Iraq in 2003 which still had support but less) was out for blood. We watched the towers fall in real time and went collectively insane for a while.
Can we put this in the next opening post? Could jave used this data days ago before my panic attack.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
There were absolutely massive anti war protests and speech prior to and throughout both wars that were entirely ignored and subsequently memory holed.
Still though.
Just send the poor Americans out to get eviscerated, ordered to neutralize the poor citizens of our, "enemies countries", instead of hitting the head of the snakes head on..(Russia for Vietnam, Saudi Arabia for Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.) , But we can't because of "our corporate overlord's behest and relationships to those countries. Hell,even the first time against the Kingdom of Hawaii, at the behest of the "Dole Cooperation" whispering in Teddy Roosevelt's ear, to tame the ungrateful savages, for daring to challenge the U.S, (surrogate to England's and Europeans in particular.) Has the. Been our SOP.
I just hope all foreign countries now look at us with a side eye,because we truly don't give two fucks about the natives anywhere and willing ready to throw them to the wolves, when that haven't , "done anything for the United States lately.".
We in America deserve this.
Poor things. That was 20 years ago and they haven’t had any real agency since.
Eh I was a burnout highschool freshman and even I could recognize how fuckin bad of an idea this was from the outset and that it was basically just us debasing ourselves in a pretty blatant wish for genocide. I could see why it was happening, and understand the failings of my countrymen, but it was never really able to be condoned. Bottom to top our every response to 9/11 was wrong, and mostly just handed the long game to the attackers.
eg -
And if you check the actual source it actually goes up from there in 2002.
That puts too little of that feeling on literally everyone else at the time.
I mean, okay? Grats on your foresight I guess? That doesn't really counter the argument which was that the vast majority of the country was definitely in favor of the US doing something after 9/11 happened.
You can't get that many Americans to agree that ice cream or pizza tastes good.
Again, people are conflating 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 Iraq protests in most cases. There were some protests but hardly a massive upwelling of support about Afghanistan in particular.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534