Get Rek'd
No word yet on the Taliban accepting Juan Guaido's provisional government.
Remembering how they call Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires" and hoping it keeps remaining true for the USA.
It took the Brits three goes to get the message. Can't see the US being smarter.
George Sr. couldn’t get it done.
George Jr. couldn’t get it done.
You know what that means right?
:jeb: :amerikkka:
:amerikkka: :jeb:
:jeb: :amerikkka:
they expect the troop surge
but I give them the guac surge
Quote is just Western copium, since Afghanistan has spent much of its history being part of someone else's Empire (Macedonian, Persian, Mongol, etc).
Should I be terrified? I mean, the Taliban are fucking bad, right?
Yeah let's remember that it's not good the Taliban are taking control of the whole country, even if it makes America look bad.
Just to be clear, the get reck'd is solely to the President of Afghanistan who's abandoned his cabinet and people to a group straight out of a TNO bad-ending like the spineless American flunky he is.
I hope it didn't sound like I was throwing shade. I was more trying to figure out what the hell this all means in the grand scheme of things.
to anybody reading this, check out the latest episode of Radio War Nerd on Afghanistan. While the Taliban are obviously terrible, the ridiculous speed at which the government collapsed speaks to their absolute weakness and lack of popular support https://www.podbean.com/media/share/dir-4ptax-f939589?utm_campaign=w_share_ep&utm_medium=dlink&utm_source=w_share
It's not great, bad times are gonna be had, but at least in Kabul they've declared a general amnesty so they're not going to shoot women and hang people on the street like in the cities where their militias have broken through without command discipline.
I genuinely think that they are surprised by the total collapse and are scrambling to establish Civilian command of their irregulars and form a government. I was a pessimist and I thought on Friday they'd last a week before Kabul fell.
Of course, that won't save hardline supporters of the state. There's 4 jets parked on the runway at the airport rn, packed with refugees, but they can't take off because the US have parked 2 chinhooks and a c130 right on the tarmac.
It’s crazy to think in concrete terms what establishing a government would be like. The government here is such an abstract, distant thing and they’re like, no we need to find people who can go collect taxes and people who will be responsible for this area and that area. Like they’ve got to be currently appointing people to just pick up work as they realize it needs done.
Not trying to romanticize the Taliban. Just a moment of this process finally occurring to me. A “government is just people” thing
Yeah, as an aside, that's why things like mutual aid and establishing dual power institutions are so important. It's relatively easy to topple a system, it's hard to do it while keeping the power on and the food shipments incoming.
Loved the look at people doing that in the vice doc on the Russian seperatists in Donetsk, just scrambling to find dudes who can do things besides carry a gun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woD44CsR4jg&t=618s
This is a really interesting problem that I think about sometimes. It really puts into perspective how unorganized we are.
These are gonna be the same people. They got most of the cities to surrender basically by bribing officials and telling them they're gonna retain their spot if they surrender. You don't have to replace everyone immediately, you just have to get them to do your thing.
I think you'll be okay then. Concern might be warranted, but certainly not terror.
They're bad, but the only way Afghanistan will ever change for the better is if America has nothing to do with it.
apparently that dude has a phd in "conflict resolution", whatever that means
Because books today aren't about anything. They're just memoirs for rich influencers writing about nonsense that happened in their childhoods, thinking the flavor of ice cream they chose must explain why they're the President of whatever today.
They're applying toy packaging design styles to book covers because they don't think the book will sell on its own merit
is this just an american publishing thing?
everytime i'm confronted by non-american books, i'm always impressed by how austere and simple the covers are in comparison.
Watching the CIA, DoS and DoD fuck this up so royally is a lot of fun, I gotta say.
I also wanna be cynical and say that the war wasn't "lost", it was deliberately made a forever war which resulted in one of the largest upward transfers of wealth and then ended when it became too much of a liability. Of course, none of that negates the fact that the Empire's image and legitimacy have taken a big L.
The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?
The president of Afghanistan has been kidnapped by the characters of the last tv show you watched. The item to your left is your only weapon. Would you live in this insanely idyllic cabin on the sea for 1 million dollars but you'd have to give up Afghanistan for a year?
The veil is thin! Let the recruitment begin!
I can't. I'm IP banned from r*ddit
Was talking to someone today (mid 20s American) who--while genuinely wanting to know how this all came to be--had no clue of the history of the US/USSR proxy wars in Afghanistan and how the US supported the Mujahideen, from which the Taliban grew.
The education system in this country...
I don't think I've ever had a history class go further than WWII. Everyone's knowledge after that is just people's vague recollection of the propaganda of the time.
That's an interesting thought. How long does it take for "vague propaganda" and lies to become "history"?
In my personal experience, I'd say anywhere from 15-20 years after the event, unless there's some concerted effort to control the narrative as quickly as possible. For example, how 9/11 was treated by the government and the media. Now that the dust has settled (no pun intended) on 9/11, the american left abandoned all of the truther stuff and the right has picked up the mantle. I remember when questioning the official story was what the fringe left was into, and the right was still waving flags and beating battle drums. How did we end up flipping on this?
When the State "wins" and there isn't a narrative to change, it just kind of happens gradually.
How did we end up flipping on this?
Speaking as someone outside the US 9/11 was cringe even then, esp. the reaction to it.
I was 13. Even then, I remember the nationalist furvor that was stirring in every adult regardless of political affiliation. People who weren't political all of a sudden were pro war, without having any understanding of the far reaching consequences. I remember telling my dad that I had no plan to join the military and if they drafted me, I would move to Canada. He said "we didn't raise no runners in this house" and I just laughed and said "apparently you did..."
He tried this whole "well, what would you do if some terrorists blew up some place your mom or sister were?"
Same thing you would, dad. Go to the funeral and nothing else.
I didn't want to fight the Bug, then they destroyed Buenos Aires.
Now that the dust has settled (no pun intended) on 9/11, the american left abandoned all of the truther stuff and the right has picked up the mantle. I remember when questioning the official story was what the fringe left was into, and the right was still waving flags and beating battle drums. How did we end up flipping on this?
I think the reason the truther stuff was so popular was because it was one of the only angles you could take to be opposed to going to war, at the time. Basically everyone in the country was pissing and shidding all over the place at that point, what, were you supposed to say like, "I don't see how US interventionism is supposed to achieve anything but petty revenge and more bloodshed?" They'd just respond like, "Good." And of course if you thought, "Huh, I wonder if there's something in history about the Taliban or Osama bin Laden that might explain why they did this," then just for asking that question people would regard you with suspicion, like you're a terrorist sympathizer or something. People were not open to learning more details about the situation or thinking ahead to what the eventual outcome might be, so the conspiracy theory gained popularity because it was a direct challenge to the narrative that didn't really require much in the way of introspection or learning.
As time passed, more people were able to look at things with cooler heads and knowledge spread, and we also got to see how things actually played out, and so it became unnecessary to resort to a conspiracy to say that the war was bad, or even that 9/11 was the government's fault. To the extent that it's still around on the right, it's probably because they haven't adapted to the later criticisms. They don't care about history or necessarily see the US supporting mujaheddin against the USSR as a bad thing, and they don't care about civilian casualties because they're brown and Muslim. There's a sliver of people who have those perspectives but also oppose the war because government bad, and they know that government bad generally isn't persuasive so there's still use for the conspiracy theory.
