I’m not sure the Taliban will actually welcome that. They know that improved infrastructure in Afghanistan leads to greater national unity and national identity. And they know that they’re actually pretty badly outnumbered. They maintained power in the 1990s by keeping the various regional governors / tribal rulers / warlords fractured and disorganized. They’re especially not going to want to welcome in a unifying factor provided by Chinese atheists.
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No, they weren’t. The Afghan government at the time—the Taliban—were actively supporting and sheltering those camps.
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The idea of a blood bath though titillating is misguided.
Maybe I’m just jaded because I haven’t heard the weekend death toll here in Chicago.
And will be welcomed.
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Yeah, bloodbaths are so inconvenient. Especially since, you know, you don’t need to be the guy causing one to be caught in one. Or, as someone with direct experience with one of the worst days of fighting in human history once wrote, ‘those without swords can still die on them’.
Or maybe you prefer the words of Mohandis Gandhi?
“If the choice is between cowardice, and violence, I would advise violence.”
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Sorry, fixed now.
That’s a nonsensical question. Alluding to US cokeheads who’ve recently been making complete idiots of themselves on the teevee is a close as I can get if the underlying topic is eluding you.
Maybe you know something about the cartels the rest of us don’t?
The Spanish conquered all that territory a half millennia past. Then United Fruit waltzed in.
And in this thread we’ve already discussed the fact that no one, including Alexander, has ever managed to conquer what we know today as Afghanistan.
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Just read that this is happening with nearly zero resistance because the Taliban simply bribed everyone to stand aside. Absolute, thoroughgoing corruption.
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Here’s that thread. Truly frightening this man is a Governor.
https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1425619485151596552?s=21
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I have yet to hear of blood baths from the international media in Kabul. Keep me posted.
I’d like to hear more about that.
I don’t have an expert or an informed opinion since Afghanistan is not something I think about much but I am wondering why all the focus is on which US policy failed, or that no country has been able to control Afghanistan.
Seems to me that ultimately if anyone is to blame for what is happening now it’s the people in Afghanistan.
And aren’t the Taliban Afghanis also?
They’re not technically a foreign invader, so isn’t it a civil war?
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Well, you’re the one who brought them up.
But no, you won’t hear about them right now. You’ll hear about sustained campaigns of terror and abuse. You’ll hear about the systematic murder of anyone who helped out the Americans. It won’t be today. It’ll be over the next few years.
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Some of them. Some of them are Pakistanis. Much like the Kurds, they tend to identify less by nationality and more by tribe or sect.
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The Afghan government has collapsed and Ghani has fled the country, and this headline piece – pretty obviously prewritten and thrown out like a crumb to the hungry to comment – is what TPM has on offer?
Just think of the discussion the Afghan debacle could occasion, with twenty years of failed policy decisions to chew on. TPM certainly missed the boat here. But by 5 pm, maybe they’ll slip a headline in.
Maybe.
[Biden] needs to stand up and clearly say it, that the fall of the afghan army with almost no shots fired is exactly why it was the correct choice to leave.
Agree.
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China and Islamic radicalism are hardly compatible. On the other hand, Pakistan is mostly Sunni, and has been backing a proxy war against the Afghan government for years. Together China and Pakistan see this as a win-win deal until Chinese engineers on the ground start getting kidnapped or killed. That said, Afghanistan has very interesting geology.
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Clinton and Obama?
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I’ve often thought there are more of these than we imagine, because it’s difficult for us to imagine how someone could actually believe that stuff. But they’re not all Grahams and Stefaniks. A guy like DeSantis is a terrorist—a hateful, rage-filled person who latches onto a belief system that calls for the level of destruction that matches the fire burning deep down where most of us have souls.
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Of course. But I was actually thinking Pakistan potentially getting the upper hand could be a game changer. It could go hot and the non-proliferation folks would say, “well we were right about where it was most likely to start.”
I don’t think the big ugly orange turd could come up with this logic, do you?
I would like to see the evil assholes that set this up for TFG hung and then shot. They wanted Biden to surge (more money in their deals) or jump. They were going to blame him for whatever it was. I don’t think Biden had a choice and they frelling knew it.
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Yep, that’s the one. Thanks!
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