this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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Maybe Trump shouldn't have signed that surrender and let them out of jail.
Imagine thinking world events happen because of whoever is on TV
The Taliban governs Afghanistan because Americans overthrew the previous secular left-wing Republic of Afghanistan government because the Republic made extracting surplus value from the region difficult.
The Taliban is in power because white Americans are so bloodthirsty and unhinged that Afghanis prefer a far-right evangelical government to a permanent fascist colonial occupation with liberal aesthetics.
They will remain in power because Americans funneled so many weapons to right wing paramilitary death squads like the Mujahideen and others (which consolidated into the Taliban) that the country will never be stable enough to return to secular and left-wing governance.
This is why China is pouring money into Afghanistan, if the country becomes stable enough, Afghanistan becomes a reliable partner nation and connects China to the Europe, right wing thought and nationalism is eroded by education into solidarity and internationalism, and the conditions for left wing organizing can eventually return.
Which means oil is processed in the county, and the surplus value produced by those high-value form petroleum products remain in the hands of the people that live and work there, instead of the surplus value being siphoned of out of the country by the American corporations that Americans like to pretend are separate from the American government. Which is why Americans intervened to begin with.
girl power
This. This is a good description of governments from US-backed Afghanistan to Ukraine to Tel Aviv.
Afghans don't prefer the Taliban. They have no choice in the matter. The religious zealots rule.
They have no choice because Americans gave the Mujahideen (and affiliates which later consolidated into the Taliban) guns and Stinger missiles to overthrow the democratically elected socialist Republic of Afghanistan in 1992.
The American government gave rural right-wing evangelists the weapons necessary to overthrow the socialist government elected by a huge majority in the secular left-wing cities. Does that sound familiar?
The US gave weapons and trained with NATO the Afghanistan military to safeguard an elected government. The military surrendered in days. That is why Afghans have no choice.
Have you ever considered the possibility that the training NATO gave them was just that shit rather then the Afgans being unable to comprehend the miracles of western tactics?
these two facts might be more intimately related than you think
the US sponsored and financed those religious zealot networks in the 1970s to block a socialist movement in afghanistan that had begun in the 1920s. the farm laborers and workers of the country were sick of the feudal system of massive landowners and were tired of the british soldiers propping it up. they wanted universal secular education, an end to the honor killings of women, and a transition to a democratic republican form of governance uninterested in being occupied by western powers.
the US merely continued the project of the british occupiers: financing, training and arming religious psychos (literally men who threw acid in the faces of women who were literate) and opium gangsters, because these are the kinds of assholes that can be relied upon to kill socialist reforms without compunction. the kind of people that will murder children, burn books, and firebomb schools/hospitals. the US wound this minority of killers up and set them lose on the soviet border to lure the US' rival into an intractable war.
it worked and then the disease got a mind of its own, containment failed (several of US-backed strongmen who functioned as cutouts in supplying war materiel in the gulf were overthrown), and the violence turned towards outwards, and specifically towards the west. the taliban and ISIS are offshoots of networks the US and the UK established and, at best "lost control" of. but, more cynically, they still play a vital role in goosing the military industrial complex and making americans angry at central asians/arabs, sparking their will to export money and violence at the border of our geopolitical rivals.
If there's anything that would have fixed the situation in Afghanistan, it was not having the U.S. stay there indefinitely.
No, but if you want to assign the end to someone, there is only one.
There's plenty of blame to go around; no need to hang it all on one person. If you like Biden, the better argument is that he was correct to leave.
Biden had no choice. Check that...he could have added more troops, set up an armed enclave, told the taliban that Trump didn't really sign that surrender and hope for the best.
Biden is the president; of course he had a choice. Fortunately, he made the right one.
He made the only one he could make.
Honestly not sure -- were you being sarcastic here? Why couldn't he have done something like this?
There's also the ever-possible "find some technical violation the other side did and back out," or "find some issue that's larger than imagined and unilaterally delay the agreement," etc. Who was going to hold him accountable?
Biden wanted to end the war as well but in a controlled fashion which the agreement precluded. The agreement itself was registered with the UN and there was no way to cancel it.
Was the UN going to force the U.S. out of Afghanistan if Biden re-wrote the agreement to his liking? The repercussions would have been a few countries making strong statements, if that.
Also a fracture in the world order with other agreements in doubt, US not considered an honest broker, ect.
There are centuries of evidence that the U.S. is not an honest broker (look at our treaty history with Native Americans). This would have made no difference.
While it is true that you can search back in our internal history to find examples of bad deals, it is also true on the international stage the US has a long history of peace, trade, treaty, ect. Deals that have stood the test of time. Of course there are exceptions, like Trump pulling out of the Iran agreement. Which resulted in putting us and the world in an uncertain place. But, by and large, a security agreement for instance, with the US is something other countries want.
We've been at war for something like 250 of our years of existence. We invaded all our continental neighbors, most of Latin America, plus Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, etc. in living memory.
The trade deals we sign are often at gunpoint (see "gunboat diplomacy," the opening of Japan, our history of coup attempts against countries that don't run their economies on our terms, constant sanctions, etc.).
You seem to be disappointed that your assumptions are wrong. BTW, the Korean War was with the UN which the US is part of. Vietnam, peace treaty signed Iraq, another agreement. Afghanistan, trump signed that one. Last time I was in Grenada everything was cool. Panama was a US protectorate when we invaded. US citizens there.
Vietnam doesn't need to sign a trade deal next month. China doesn't want them to do it. But they'll sign with Biden.
Why? We are the largest market on earth.
There are no assumptions here. We did, in fact, invade those countries. You are giving America's stated justifications, which do not mean the invasions didn't happen.
Not justifications, results. If you want justifications I'd have to go through each one. In fact, I'm not sure you read it Panama at the time was not it's own country. I'm not sure Grenada is either.
Maybe you should like, shut the fuck up and read a book or something
Hey rudeboy, practice what you preach
What book would you suggest?
Ulysses- James Joyce
So, nothing to do with the actual topics being discussed, just a book that sounds like something a cool and worldly nerd would read?
This is not surprising, but it certainly is disappointing.
You just said book and I was stupid enough to give you one. I like. Now you want a specific type of book. Try See It Shoot It by Chris Fuller.
Silly me expecting you to have a relevant, on-topic book suggestion in this relevant and on-topic thread where your response to being told to read a book was "nuh uh YOU".
Congrats on coming up with something on the second try though. I might actually read that one, I have no interest in reading Joyce's horseshit ever again.
I appreciate snark when it has wit. But, you have none.
I don't hold you in high enough regard to muster any snark for you, that was just my honest opinion.
You are using vulgarity to hide your ignorance and it's not working,
"I'm not owned, you're owned!" I say as I slowly turn into a pickle
technically the "Ukraine War" is called a Special Military Operation by the Russian invaders, which makes it more justifiable
Remember when Gaddafi got rid of his nukes in an act of goodwill towards the West, and then later the US didn't give a fuck and NATO destroyed Libya, bringing open air slave markets to the country? I'm guessing you don't.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_civil_war_(2011)#:~:text=It%20erupted%20with%20the%20Libyan,who%20fired%20on%20the%20crowd.
The U.S. hasn’t been at peace for a single day since WW2 lol