That.
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Seconded. A very quick insightful read. Highly recommended.
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Debaucle (noun, countable): a portmanteau word of debauchery and debacle.
The outcome of a particularly indecent quagmire. The end of the conflict in Afghanistan was a real debaucle.
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The Russian General* did that when asked if he could solve the problem in Chechnya. He replied he’d do it if he could form a unit out of the sons of the members of the Duma.
- Oops forgot to add the name. It was Alexander Lebed.
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American military supremacy is largely built around the ability to deliver large-scale destruction. If you need a ship sunk or a base flattened or a uniformed army shot to pieces then we’ve got just the thing for that.
Taking out a decentralized network of guerrilla fighters embedded deep in the fabric of the same society you’re supposedly tasked with defending is another task entirely. Ain’t no bomb smart enough for that job.
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I think the problem, ultimately, is that they sold us a war without sacrifice. As if you can invade a country and install a government and change a culture with ten thousand troops, airstrikes and a few trillion dollars in bribes and mercenaries. As if you can prepare for a full scale invasion in a month. As if we can wage war and destroy a country while everything stays completely normal here. I think a lot of people cynically went along with it, knowing that this was a half-assed effort and kicking the consequences down the road. But as to why we went in half-cocked, oversold the mission, and ultimately failed - that was pure politics, and the beneficiary of it was Bush.
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And at the time Democratic politicians were just as eager to buy what they were selling as Republican ones. That’s why I don’t think we can put all of this on Bush and his cronies: because a helluva lot of the people who voted in favor of the war should have known better.
Bernie Sanders should have known better. John Lewis should have known better. Joe Biden should have known better. These and all the other members of congress who voted in favor of the invasion were smart enough to know that there IS no such thing as war without sacrifice no matter what the administration might have been selling them. But they all gave George W. Bush a blank check to wage war in Afghanistan anyway.
Barbara Lee is the only person who served as a U.S. legislator in late 2001 who doesn’t have the blood of innocent Afghans on her hands.
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It’s easy to forget what the political climate was like back then. If you can stomach it, here’s a 2002 interview where Jon Stewart is being far too friendly to Ann Coulter. At the 3 minute mark they start talking about the war and Jon is remarking on just how popular it is.
So disappointing to see Jon’s deference here. He didn’t really seriously sour on the war himself until much later.
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And now the war supplying industrialists and capitalists have started complaining about how the Taliban might not share all that mineral wealth they’re sitting on, with pieces like this one: The Taliban are sitting on $1 trillion worth of minerals the world desperately needs - CNN
Do your own search, there are dozens of stories about lithium in Afghanistan, all published in the last few days.
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The biggest problem is that the US and their allies were fighting a different war than their opponents.
The US thought it was liberating a country. How you like that word…
The Afghans were fighting against foreign influence in their country. Whatever the motives or methods of the Western forces, they would always be exactly what the majority of the Afghans were against! This is why they never won, never could win.
You can’t liberate people who don’t want to be liberated by you!
Most Afghans are not Taliban, and many don’t even like them (hard to get exact numbers) but they don’t like Western influence either.
Don’t bother me with Afghans you know or have seen in the news that supported the war, that is pure selection bias. How many anti-western Afghans do you expect to meet in the West or working for Western countries?
And also don’t make the mistake thinking that anti-Western or Anti-American means evil or bad, there are some very good reasons not to like us! There are some good people in Afghanistan with reasonable reasons to be against outsiders stomping around in their country, shooting at random at people, and nicking the oil.
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