Talk politics here.
The Politics Thread
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Well it can. Honestly I think it’s a miracle elections happen at all, never mind fair elections that are accepted by all factions. In a lot of countries elections are a sham and I think the US is heading in that direction.
Not really in America, though. It can be legally manipulated through voting laws, but it’s fairly impossible to fraudulently win a national election by illegal means. The system is too decentralized for any practical fraud on that scale to be effective and remain concealed.
Legal manipulation though like biased districting and limitations on voting access have a far greater effect, but that’s all right out in the open.
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Manipulate the election? Rig it? I don’t know but I believe that another country could flood the social media platforms with a slanted narrative and thereby manipulate the voters in that country. That would be an indirect way to undermine the whole thing.
As for the former POTUS, in a debate with Hilary in 2016, Hilary stated that to him everything is rigged when he loses, even when his Apprentice show lost the Emmy, he said it was all rigged. It should really come at no surprise then…
One thing he did know that other GOP overlooked was the white voters who felt left out of it all. He bought them into the GOP with his racist populist message and the rest of the GOPers now have to cater to them, even defend them regarding Jan 6th.
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Fair enough, but you have to have people believe in the system for it to work. I think the division is so high presently that both parties lack the faith that the other side is playing fair, wether it is true or not. And if the stakes are so high as they seem to be, why wouldn’t you cheat if it is the only way to stop the opponent.
It is interesting in that the Democrats and Republican partisans are just crazy with how strongly they demonize the other side. So, they end up undermining the system. In the 20th Century, politicians were just as conniving and basically corrupt as any in office or desiring office today but they were not as eager to burn everything down just to grab a little advantage in the ashes.
As a result, the only thing that keeps the political system functioning – essentially everyone’s faith in it – is rapidly diminishing. That faith was probably unwarranted and probably almost always has been, but no progress can be made without it.
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I once read that Prohibition was a pivotal point in regards to Americans faith in its government. It wasn’t something the people really wanted. The government did something they didn’t believe in. A result was that criminals became “heroes” because they gave the people what the government wouldn’t.
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I once read that Prohibition was a pivotal point in regards to Americans faith in its government. It wasn’t something the people really wanted. The government did something they didn’t believe in. A result was that criminals became “heroes” because they gave the people what the government wouldn’t.
Interesting… I also heard that in the 60’s, it was the result of the Warren Commission report on the JFK assassination that led many to conclude that the government wasn’t telling the whole truth. This contributed to the feelings of coverups, conspiracy theories, and so on.
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I once read that Prohibition was a pivotal point in regards to Americans faith in its government. It wasn’t something the people really wanted. The government did something they didn’t believe in. A result was that criminals became “heroes” because they gave the people what the government wouldn’t.
Prohibition also showed that a relatively small but organized group of focused citizens could successfully achieve their agenda goals by manipulating government officials worried about their own images and re-election.
Not that something like that could happen today…
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Yeah it’s tough. Democracy is difficult because you have to play nice, you have to be accepting of multiple viewpoints even when you disagree with them, it’s easy to backslide into authoritarian modes where you just silence or jail or kill everybody who opposes you. Of course Trump is the main cuplrit in the US, I think when he said he’d put Clinton in jail is when shit went off the rails.
It started a long time ago. I think the Clinton impeachment was the first real shot where people idiotically decided to start behaving politically dangerously. Kennedy’s opponents could have made a lot out of his extra-marital affairs. Nixon actively sabotaged the Vietnam peace talks to ensure there would be no treaty before the election. Johnson before him was notorious for his under the table deals and he actually may have committed election fraud to win his Senate seat.
The farther back in history, corruption in US politics was far more common, obvious and egregious. In terms of actual political malfeasance, our system today is simply overworked and underfunded much more than it is actual corrupt. It is nowhere near as bad as it was in the 70’s and 80’s. Our problems today involve the way campaign finance promotes incompetence in office holders rather than actual bribery and graft corrupt the system.
That incompetence may be a factor of there being no serious cold war. We’ve had variation on it, but when there was a Cold War, political opponents had good reason to avoid embarrassing each other because of the conflict on the world stage. Johnson could have exposed Nixon’s interference with the Vietnam conflict, but he was also smart enough to know that to bring that to international attention simply weakens the U.S. position on a larger level. Today’s politicians don’t have the competence to really understand that.
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Nowadays, you’ll get push notifications on your phone for just about anything.
If not that it’ll be an article link from JR.
Hubert Schmidt – star of 1950s Austrian radio drama “The Laundry of My Ancestors” has died aged 122.
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Still putting politicians in jail, or threatening to do that, is an escalation. And of course now it’s Trump people want to go to jail, or worse. And some of those Republicans in the camp of Marjorie Taylor Greene want the same for Biden.
Well, you know, if they’ve done criminal shit they should go to jail. With Trump, I have little doubt that – in his time before the presidency – he committed numerous crimes that will hopefully catch up with him. But those are private crimes, as it were, which being a politicians must never protect you from.
It’s more difficult, I have to admit, when it comes to policy. I’d still want to see fucking Cheney and Bush tried as war criminals though.
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Hubert Schmidt – star of 1950s Austrian radio drama “The Laundry of My Ancestors” has died aged 122.
1 user thanked author for this post.So sad, he left us too soon.
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Hubert Schmidt – star of 1950s Austrian radio drama “The Laundry of My Ancestors” has died aged 122.
1 user thanked author for this post.So sad, he left us too soon.
I don’t know, he was pretty washed up.
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Well, you know, if they’ve done criminal shit they should go to jail. With Trump, I have little doubt that – in his time before the presidency – he committed numerous crimes that will hopefully catch up with him.
I really don’t know. Maybe. When the whole Mueller thing started I wasn’t convinced, I remember Jim got a bit pissed when I said I wasn’t sure it would lead to Trump behind bars. Lots of people were convinced he was working together with Putin and he would be either be forced to step down or he would be found guilty of treason, along with people like Bannon etc
A bunch of people were arrested and convicted as a result of the Mueller probe though, and a number of the criminal cases facing the Trump organisation from New York State right now are a result of elements of that probe. Trump escaped largely because the Department of Justice apparently won’t engage in a criminal investigation of a sitting president.
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I really don’t know. Maybe. When the whole Mueller thing started I wasn’t convinced, I remember Jim got a bit pissed when I said I wasn’t sure it would lead to Trump behind bars. Lots of people were convinced he was working together with Putin and he would be either be forced to step down or he would be found guilty of treason, along with people like Bannon etc
Yeah, like Lorcan says, the result of the Mueller report wasn’t that Trump hasn’t done anything illegal, it was that he had and that the question of whether those things could be prosecuted with a sitting President wasn’t up to Mueller, and the DoJ deciced that whatever a sitting President has done, you can’t prosecute him.
But I wasn’t even talking about that. I was talking about before he was President, and his private life. Trump is shady as fuck and a horrible con artist who amongst other shady things was running a diploma mill. Legally, he has survived on being (perceived as) rich as fuck and nobody being interested in taking too close a look at his businesses. That has changed, and the hope is that he will finally get his, as he should’ve a long time ago.
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I really don’t know. Maybe. When the whole Mueller thing started I wasn’t convinced, I remember Jim got a bit pissed when I said I wasn’t sure it would lead to Trump behind bars. Lots of people were convinced he was working together with Putin and he would be either be forced to step down or he would be found guilty of treason, along with people like Bannon etc
Yeah, like Lorcan says, the result of the Mueller report wasn’t that Trump hasn’t done anything illegal, it was that he had and that the question of whether those things could be prosecuted with a sitting President wasn’t up to Mueller, and the DoJ deciced that whatever a sitting President has done, you can’t prosecute him.
But I wasn’t even talking about that. I was talking about before he was President, and his private life. Trump is shady as fuck and a horrible con artist who amongst other shady things was running a diploma mill. Legally, he has survived on being (perceived as) rich as fuck and nobody being interested in taking too close a look at his businesses. That has changed, and the hope is that he will finally get his, as he should’ve a long time ago.
Of course, if he broke the law he needs to pay for that. But I have a suspicion this could escalate and the justice system will become a political tool. It’s part of the slide towards authoritarianism I think we’re in.
edit: I do agree it would be good to see the people behind the Iraq mess tried for war crimes. I read some stuff about the torture recently and it is disgusting.
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I agree, but at the same time it does feel like the way the system is set up – and has been stable for decades now – is driving us towards escalation. The erosion of public structures and ever-rising social inequality seems to be wired into the way politics have gone for half a century now, and it doesn’t feel like a reverse is possible without sharp conflict.
At the same time, the climate crisis is really the only topic that matters and after three decades in which this was already obvious, people actually seem to be catching up to that fact. And it is still not an issue that our laisser-faire-capitalism is set up to deal with.
Yesterday’s IPCC report has made really clear that we’re running out of time.“The [IPCC] report is very alarming,” Satyendra Prasad, Fiji’s ambassador and permanent representative to United Nations, said. “It comes out exceeding where we all thought the estimates were … it brings forward some of the catastrophic scenarios that we have been thinking about in the Pacific of sea level rise, loss of low-lying lands, and possible loss of entire countries within the century. The timelines for these things will certainly be brought much closer.”
The IPCC report presented five scenarios based on varying levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. Under the high and very high emissions scenarios outlined in the report, global heating is predicted to reach 3.6C and 4.4C above pre-industrial levels respectively, by the end of the century. Even in the intermediate scenario global warming of 2C would be extremely likely to be exceeded.
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If you want to believe that there can be a compromise on every issue, then that is your right.
As I said, some issues are either for or against, especially in the States. Btw, where are you from?
The more we see on social media the video snippets of Karens making a big scene in a public store or these guys going on a tirade in public because they refuse to wear a mask, or a cop kneeling on a black man’s neck for almost ten minutes, the more there is a realization of people showing their true colors and there are a LOT more @$$holes in the world than what was thought before.
I have to say that the people you said who “have a reasonably complex and nuanced take” are the socially progressive ones. The rest however are the ones who for the most part, imho, barely have a high school diploma or even a GED and they feel they can challenge Dr. Fauci on COVID, debate 20 year career climatologists on climate change, MAGA no matter what, storm the Capitol, feel entitled to everything, play the victim when they instigate, get elected to Congress, and so on and so forth. And there are more of them out of the woodworks these days in the US, and possibly (no census yet) outnumber the progressives and trying to suppress the progressive vote.
It was Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov who both predicted that its getting to the point where people feel their points are just as valid and carry as much weight as someone who clearly knows more….There is a reason why a guest commentator said on CNN about “how stupid this country really is.”
In this light, what was said in that class a long time ago is not so “simplistic and binary”.
That’s about it for now.
Like I said, an age of dummies. https://t.co/jvoUXVGPsy
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) August 13, 2021
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Finally!!
I’m glad the Democratic Party pushed him on this, going so far as to begin the impeachment process. If only half the Republicans in the House and Senate had a similar backbone, Donald Trump’s power over that party would have quickly withered away.
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More good news!!
Senate Passes Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill
Maybe there’s hope for this nation’s political system yet. Or maybe not, but I live in hope!
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Or maybe not, but I live in hope!
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[sarcasm]How dare he not kiss Trump’s ass?![/sarcasm]
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Taliban capture two large Afghan cities
Honestly I think it’s just a matter of time and they’ll be in control of the whole country.
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This chick:
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Ripped For Her Most Callous Coronavirus Claims Yet
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Honestly I think it’s just a matter of time and they’ll be in control of the whole country.
And apparently far, far less time than even the pessimistic estimates.
This whole fucking thing. Man. I mean… Right now, I would really love to dig up those Millarworld threads from over fifteen years ago in which I (and others, obviously) argued with so many people, predicting that exactly this would be the end result of this fucking war that America dragged us into.
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Yep, Taliban is already entering Kabul apparently.
Imagine something like this happening, like a neo-nazi army taking over city after city in the US and nobody giving a shit. I honestly have no idea where this is going. Maybe it’s back to how the Taliban ruled Afganistan, or maybe China or Pakistan will try to rule the country some way, making a deal with the Taliban or installing their own puppet.
If the former, I think the US is back in Afghanistan within ten years time. Maybe just with drones, trying to take out leaders and terrorist camps. I think it’s a given terror groups like Al Qaida and Islamic State will have a foothold in the country and we’ll also see genocidal attacks against the Hazaras.
American intervention in Afghanistan has turned the nation from a relatively progressive modern society in the 70s to a war-torn heckhole controlled by regressive religious extremists. Maybe, just maybe they should stay the fuck home.
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American intervention in Afghanistan has turned the nation from a relatively progressive modern society in the 70s to a war-torn heckhole controlled by regressive religious extremists. Maybe, just maybe they should stay the fuck home.
This is the problem. The Taliban is in power in large part due to American led international military intervention. The United States didn’t invade Afghanistan because it opposed the Taliban. The invasion was motivated by Al Qaida and the US and allies also liked the idea of further isolating Iran.
Like, of course, America didn’t get involved until late in World War 2, and the motivation to stop the holocaust had no impact on that decision either. No one ever goes to war for a good reason and no one has ever really invaded a country for a noble reason. The people promoting that certainly aren’t the people who have to do the shooting and dying.
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The Taliban specifically are effectively their invention, they paid and encouraged jihadis to go there. As you say before that Afghanistan was socially very moderate.
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I think you all have that wrong. The Soviets were the first to meddle and they came in to support a commie government that killed people by the thousands against popular uprisings. The Soviets then went on a genocidal campaign killing between 500,000 and 2 million Afghans. I am not sure wether it is wrong in such a bloodbath to support religious groups rising up against that. So to say “Afghanistan was moderate and progressive before the US intervened” is just false.
The ‘popular’ uprisings were sparked by the communist government banning usury, forced marriage, bride prices and raising the age of consent…
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I think you all have that wrong. The Soviets were the first to meddle and they came in to support a commie government that killed people by the thousands against popular uprisings. The Soviets then went on a genocidal campaign killing between 500,000 and 2 million Afghans. I am not sure wether it is wrong in such a bloodbath to support religious groups rising up against that. So to say “Afghanistan was moderate and progressive before the US intervened” is just false.
The ‘popular’ uprisings were sparked by the communist government banning usury, forced marriage, bride prices and raising the age of consent…
They were a dictatorial government that killed tens of thousands.
Even if you’re saying “well that wasn’t that bad and they’re modern and progressive”, after them the Soviets came in and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. So it’s a misunderstanding that the US disturbed a tranquil progressive country.
You can’t actually let the Soviet Union take shit over and kill a million or so people.
This is prior to the Soviet intervention.
But even if the Soviets were engaging in terrible acts when they arrived- which I don’t deny – the US funding even worse people to get rid of them doesn’t make it all right, especially as Afghanistan is the way it is today as a direct result of the US backing extremists.
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I’m not sure what the US could have done better, but I don’t think they should have stayed out, sat on their hands while the Russians genocided the place. They could probably have vetted the people who they gave their weapons too better. Not all of the mujahideen were extremists, the leaders were pretty moderate Islamists, like Ahmed Shah Massoud. It was later that the Taliban became prominent. Although a lot of the leaders of the Taliban were also part of the mujahideen that fought the Soviets.
The mujahideen were a bunch of different militias, kind of like Syria where there are maybe a hundred different militias on the side of the anti-Assad rebels.
They absolutely should have stayed out. Every single time the US has intervened in the politics of the middle East they’ve made things worse, both in the short and long term.
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Socialists are bad mmmkay. Only genocide. Rushki deathcamps.
America strong. Good foreign policy. Much dollar. No error.
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Because we all know NATO won’t do jack shit about that Imperialism
Nor should they…if people think we shouldn’t have interfered in Afghanistan, there is no reason we should defend Ukraine or Estonia. Not sure why the Baltics are in NATO.
Note, I wasn’t condemning NATO’s lack of intervention in the former USSR, just pointing out how gung-ho some members are about violence in Afghanistan and Iraq and not about violence in nations closer to Russia.
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I’m not sure what the US could have done better, but I don’t think they should have stayed out, sat on their hands while the Russians genocided the place.
It’s powered by hindsight but if the US hadn’t done anything the collapse of the Soviet Union less than a decade later would have returned Afghanistan to self government, not riddled by heavily armed imported extremists.
You are right you cannot ignore the situation was started by the USSR and their action unforgivable but I was specifically addressing why those people are there rather than absolving everyone else from blame. Propping up ‘the enemy of my enemy’ no matter their agenda has a tragic history with the US.
They followed that policy with Pol Pot, with Saddam Hussein and the Mujahedin forces that became the Taliban. You can try and argue any of that had a positive outcome but I believe all 3 were actually significantly worse than the primary enemies in Ho Chi Minh, Iran and the USSR.
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I saw this woman on the news who has been working in Afghanistan for years. She was upset about the US pulling out and said if we had stayed another 10 – 20 years, the country would turn the corner and be healed (or words to that effect).
I honestly question that as the US has been there for decades already. Since we started leaving, the country has backslid very quickly. To have stay for ANOTHER 10 – 20 years with no guarantee of “mission accomplished”, I’m just not sure about that.
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I saw this woman on the news who has been working in Afghanistan for years. She was upset about the US pulling out and said if we had stayed another 10 – 20 years, the country would turn the corner and be healed (or words to that effect).
I honestly question that as the US has been there for decades already. Since we started leaving, the country has backslid very quickly. To have stay for ANOTHER 10 – 20 years with no guarantee of “mission accomplished”, I’m just not sure about that.
It’s not even that it’s quickly backslid. The Taliban very quickly re-established themselves in most of the rural areas of the country after the invasion (because the international coalition didn’t send enough people to actually replace the Afghan national infrastructure vacated by the fall of the Taliban) and have basically been waiting out the US, who have had Kabul secured and not much else.
There’s been a grim inevitability about all this, really.
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I saw this woman on the news who has been working in Afghanistan for years. She was upset about the US pulling out and said if we had stayed another 10 – 20 years, the country would turn the corner and be healed (or words to that effect). I honestly question that as the US has been there for decades already. Since we started leaving, the country has backslid very quickly. To have stay for ANOTHER 10 – 20 years with no guarantee of “mission accomplished”, I’m just not sure about that.
Well, if you occupy a place for 40 freakin’ years, I’m sure it will change, but maybe not directly because of the occupation. Heck, imagine if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam for another 30 years.
The British occupied Ireland and India for a long time too, and that really worked out, didn’t it?
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It’s not even that it’s quickly backslid. The Taliban very quickly re-established themselves in most of the rural areas of the country after the invasion (because the international coalition didn’t send enough people to actually replace the Afghan national infrastructure vacated by the fall of the Taliban) and have basically been waiting out the US, who have had Kabul secured and not much else. There’s been a grim inevitability about all this, really.
On top of that, no one seems to be questioning all the rhetoric we got before the troop withdrawal either on how everything was going to just work out okay. Meanwhile, anyone that was paying attention was like “ummm… I think the Taliban are just gonna take over, right?”
So, obviously the same people who had no plan going in to the country naturally have no plan leaving it and won’t have any better plan going back in.
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https://laurajedeed.medium.com/afghanistan-meant-nothing-9e3f099b00e5
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https://laurajedeed.medium.com/afghanistan-meant-nothing-9e3f099b00e5
Good read, that.
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https://laurajedeed.medium.com/afghanistan-meant-nothing-9e3f099b00e5
Good read, that.
Heartbreaking too.
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I listened to a bit of Radio 4 yesterday and they had one of the British generals on who headed the invasion and aftermath 20 years ago.
His criticism was entirely about the cultural elements, that as with Iraq we tried to impose western standards before anything else and didn’t establish security, not military security necessarily but jobs and food and the day to day. In Iraq they fired all the former regime soldiers and police and left to them to fend for themselves, which eventually became ISIS.
In that scenario, you inevitably end up as babysitters, your guys on the ground upholding your vision as long as you are there.
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His criticism was entirely about the cultural elements, that as with Iraq we tried to impose western standards before anything else and didn’t establish security, not military security necessarily but jobs and food and the day to day. In Iraq they fired all the former regime soldiers and police and left to them to fend for themselves, which eventually became ISIS.
I listened to a good podcast about it last night – https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/the-taliban-on-the-verge-of-victory-w-paul-rogers – and the guy there said basically, after we toppled the Taliban in 2001, we needed to send in an international peace-keeping infrastructure team about 30k strong, made up mainly of Muslims, to basically get the country running again. But we didn’t, we sent in about 5k people, almost exclusively soldiers, and left most of the country to it. It was inevitable that the Taliban would move back into that vacuum.
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I saw this woman on the news who has been working in Afghanistan for years. She was upset about the US pulling out and said if we had stayed another 10 – 20 years, the country would turn the corner and be healed (or words to that effect). I honestly question that as the US has been there for decades already. Since we started leaving, the country has backslid very quickly. To have stay for ANOTHER 10 – 20 years with no guarantee of “mission accomplished”, I’m just not sure about that.
Well, if you occupy a place for 40 freakin’ years, I’m sure it will change, but maybe not directly because of the occupation. Heck, imagine if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam for another 30 years.
The British occupied Ireland and India for a long time too, and that really worked out, didn’t it?
However the US has had troops in Germany and Japan since WW2. Thye could stay forever if there was the willingness to do that.
The US didn’t colonise Germany or Japan
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It is an interesting point. The direct difference is that the US military wasn’t still fighting Germans and Japanese 20 years after WW2 and did not have active roles maintaining internal stability or policing the country.
a better comparison is Korea where we were able to hand over security to the South Koreans even though the war never actually ended.2 users thanked author for this post.
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You’re talking about Washington, right?
Hey speak for yourself. Washington is too close to me.
How bout we bomb London to get rid of Johnson? of course that may not work because there is the rumor that cockroaches can survive Nuclear attack.
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You’re talking about Washington, right?
Hey speak for yourself. Washington is too close to me.
How bout we bomb London to get rid of Johnson? of course that may not work because there is the rumor that cockroaches can survive Nuclear attack.
The only way to guarantee equality is to nuke everyone. Which I am all for.
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Multiple people have now died at Kabul airport in the throng, trying to get on the planes that are evacuating Westerners.
This looks very bad for Biden, also for the military and intelligence people that were way off in their evaluation of the situation. I think this might become a big rallying point for Republicans during future elections.
The thing is, no matter who was sitting in the Oval Office, it was always going to be a clusterfuck. Biden just happened to be the one who drew the short straw.
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True, however if it was Trump doing this, the democrats would be all over him just like the republicans are doing to Biden right now. Of course Trump is full of shit because he wanted to withdraw too.
But in 2022 and 2024 you’re going to see lots of ads with Biden and Blinken saying “this is not like Saigon at all,” with video from Saigon and Kabul side by side.
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Yeah, this is really the culmination of 40 years of the US screwing around in Afghanistan with no clear endgame or exit strategy in mind. This was almost certainly going to happen this year regardless. Trump had plans to vacate around May of this year, after all. His administration had that great peace agreement with the Taliban that involved releasing thousands of Taliban prisoners. Of course he and the GOP have already started in on their revisionist history as they continue their attempts to gaslight the public about every single thing ever. Sadly it’ll likely work.
Still a terrible mess for Biden to deal with and he deserves plenty blame here. It’s just that lots of people in the US government deserve blame on this one.
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I don’t really disagree with anything you’re saying. I think the biggest thing I knock Biden for is his seemingly blase attitude about the withdrawal. He basically said it was unlikely the Taliban would just take over once we withdrew. Just a general disconnect with the reality of the situation that’s made him look very naive and offered up some really bad clips for his opposition to latch on to. Of course it’s also clear that plenty of people in Afghanistan are not okay with the Taliban taking over. But they don’t really have the power to stop it because their leadership didn’t know how to actually exists without the US holding their hands. Which basically shows what a waste the last 20 years have been. Lost lives, lost time, lost resources and basically nothing to show for it.
I do agree that a big takeaway here should be an indictment of the war culture that DC has been obsessed with for just about ever. Of course, that won’t be DC’s takeaway at all.
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Nation building costs too much time,and money and people get bored of it long before it’s done. And any notion of democracy, where it wasn’t before, takes far longer to establish.
It’s not that it can’t be done, but it’s far harder than all the politicians of the last 20 years wish to admit.
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“Our mission was never nation building.”
Did he seriously say that?! Because it really should have fucking been once we went in there and removed the hostile government of the country. What the hell else were we doing there for two decades otherwise?
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“Our mission was never nation building.”
Did he seriously say that?! Because it really should have fucking been once we went in there and removed the hostile government of the country. What the hell else were we doing there for two decades otherwise?
Transferring a lot of money from taxpayers to defence contractors.
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Considering the alleged goal of warring in Afghanistan was to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the only real way to accomplish that is through nation building. Not that the US is capable of such a thing. We can’t even build our own country to be a place where the Taliban kind of ideology isn’t present every damn place. Our country demonizes health care, education, child care, living wages, science… Half our government basically agrees with everything the Taliban is about. Guns, violence, the patriarchy, no science, no vaccinations, anti-choice. We were never going to be able to defeat the Taliban because our own elected officials and conservative media want to build their own version of it right here.
But yeah, hard to believe Biden’s advisors thought that was a good thing to say. Because if we weren’t there to build a better nation, it’s just admitting we were there to blow shit up and funnel tax money to defense contractors. And sure, it’s true, but probably not something you want to say out loud unless you’re gonna full out denounce the entire war effort. Which surely wasn’t Biden’s intent. Even if maybe it should have been.
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We were never going to be able to defeat the Taliban because our own elected officials and conservative media want to build their own version of it right here.
The main problem the hardcore American conservatives have with the Taliban is which God they worship.
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Honestly, if anyone wanted to judge Western policy from the outcomes, it does promote a Maoist point of view. Vietnam was devastated after the war while everyone focused on the “embarrassment” the US government suffered.
Same with Afghanistan. Embarrassment is not really suffering. The Taliban are left with a devastated country to rule along with the same enemies they had before the US came.
if previous history from Korea to Syria is any indication, then Afghanistan is another job well done. Everyone we’re worried about is at each other’s throats while we’re well out of it. Of course, we’ll sell them more weapons and call it support for democracy.
I get the feeling that the worst outcome for the “leaders of the free world” would be a stable, united and peaceful Middle East under actual democracy.
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