Realistically if you want “nation build” in a place like that you need a gigantic multinational force that stays for more than a generation and has a bottomless well of money to build infrastructure and institutions. The population has to get accustomed to this new normal and not want it disrupted. Once the US started pulling troops for Iraq it was already over, any meaningful stability was impossible.
6 Likes
12 Likes
But the last two there are a description of the operation of imperialism. It’s not the rule of law but rather the rule of overwhelming air power that operated there. Fuck with us and we’ll kill you first and then your family at the funeral. By remote control.
Why is the puppet regime and it’s forces so corrupt? Because any puppet regime is corrupt by definition. That’s why they exist. To be corrupt.
Until that reality permeates the heads of imperialists they will continue to be surprised.
15 Likes
11 Likes
Wow, wow, wow:
The report also found a disjunction between what generals told Congress and what lower level officers reported.
Sigar reports, for instance, that in March 2011 testimony to Congress, Gen David Petraeus – then the commander of the International Security Assistance Force – claimed that “investments in leader development, literacy and institutions have yielded significant dividends” for the ANDSF, that Afghan forces were taking on significant combat roles against the Taliban, and that Afghan local police units were increasingly limiting the Taliban’s ability to intimidate communities”.
I mean, I guess local police units were increasingly limiting the Taliban’s ability to intimidate communities - because those communities became more worried about the police. What I’ve read is the police became actual bandits, and people began gravitating to the Taliban as a result. “Leader development” was mostly about funding graft, literacy efforts started off poorly (with 80% of the population illiterate) and then the US basically gave up entirely, and Afghan forces were taking on significant combat roles - and usually getting slaughtered…
10 Likes
100% disgusting; but the loudest voices of the people wanted the so many national occupiers out of Afghanistan.
*Did a tour in AFG. Consistent thought “What could all of these resources have done back home”. 
8 Likes
Just read through that review of George Jr’s art book. Reviewer Zoé Samudzi just ripped Jr a new one in one of the most elegantly written pieces I’ve seen in some time. Excellent critical piece, putting Junior’s “polite hobby” into a real juxtaposition with his failed policies as president. Worth a read, all the way through. Thank you @vermes82 for pointing us to it.
7 Likes
a little bit of background info on the war from the one and only Abby Martin:
ETA:
5 Likes
On the downside, a lot of the weapons attached to those vehicles end up on “technicals” the Taliban will use.
2 Likes
Thread:
6 Likes
Also, the lived reality IN the US and western countries is not nearly as democratic and driven by the rule of law as we all like to pretend and it never has been. In America, just ask anyone who isn’t white, male, or at least moderately wealthy about such things as “democracy” and “rule of law” if they have ever meaningfully existed. The events of January 6th was far more in line with our racist, sexist, and undemocratic past than many of us are comfortably admitting. We shouldn’t forget that the first wave of imperialism was on this continent long before we started to look across oceans for places to “save” from communism after World War 2. Much like our British cousins, we like to talk big about democracy and freedom, and the benefits our presence will mean for those benighted locals, but if you give our history even a cursory examination, that narrative quickly disintegrates under the glare of lived reality.
And let’s not forget the debt that the Taliban OWE America for even existing in the first place. We sent in the CIA before the Soviets EVEN STEPPED FOOT in the country, because we assumed it was coming. WE decided that violent religious assholes were better than a modern, socialist Afghanistan. 
What did people expect would eventually happen with that, with regards to women’s rights and other freedoms we like to harp on about that we most certainly do not practice?
What’s that line from the Pogues song, Streets of Sorrow / Birmingham Six? “May the whores of the empire lay awake in their beds / and sweat as they count out the sins in their head”
29 Likes
On a positive note, if we ever do send troops back, they won’t have any trouble finding Taliban soldiers: just look in literally every police station and military base.
5 Likes
7 Likes
So happy Uncle Sam could give me this twice in one life. The fall of Saigon & what we are witnessing in Afghanistan is on every level same similar and identical in every aspect, the USA can not will not stop this stupid bullshit Wars, we have to VOTE these chicken hawk squawkers out or we’re doomed to repeat this every couple of generations.
23 Likes
But the US empire is bipartisan, and none but the two parties has a chance in hell of winning at the national level. Who am I supposed to vote for?
16 Likes
Oh it’s more than that. It has the support of the ruling classes in all the wealthy nations.
I mean we are supposed to be neutral but we still allow a civilian airport to be used as a transport hub for troops going to Afghanistan
11 Likes
Do you count Bernie Sanders in that statement, I know you don’t. It was rhetorical question. Maybe AOC would send kids to their collective demise? Choices exist at the voting box.
8 Likes
10 Likes
Im reading a lot of reasons why everything is terrible. But was there really anything we should be doing other than pulling out? I mean I understand it is causing a lot of problems but so was our continued presence, right? Is there a “better way” it could have been done? seems like we were just in a terrible immoral position (that we got ourselves into) with no way out. There’s a hell of a lot to criticize here but what would be the right thing to do? Im not really seeing anyone suggest that… Maybe its just not that simple or someone would have done it already?
3 Likes
Sure, but I think a lot of the agony being expressed today in the US at least is over how quickly the Taliban regained control. It’s like, what the fuck happened to the new government we spent so much time, money and lives supposedly getting on its feet? It collapsed THAT QUICKLY?!
(Not that, as you’re saying, we should’ve even invaded in the first place. Not that it was a legitimate new government, not that Americans in general are caring any more than they ever do about dead non-Americans, etc.)
19 Likes
