Yet here we see massive hypocrisy, from the damned if you do, damned if you don't crowd. To wit: They clearly don't want us to attack other regimes to impose women's rights. They also clearly blame us for attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan when that regime openly aided and abetted the attack on the US. And now they blame us for leaving after we spent $2 trillion on the Afghan war and trying to help the people after we removed the Taliban. And yes, helped put a democratic regime in Afghanistan that in it's Constitution mandated at least 25% of it's legislators had to be women. It was 28% before the Islamic Republic fell, a higher percentage than in the US. But then they mock us for being upset about what that means to the women there. The point is the criticism. This is not even a remotely rational take.
What we need to do is keep sharing the list after making our own additions. -5 tons of vibranium -100,000 rounds of kryptonite ammunition -7 Green Lantern rings -12 Cave trolls -The Batmobile -3 French Hens
Sixteen cans of beer. Eight stacks of newsprint. 3,400 dry ink cartridges. A nude painting of John Goodman. A traffic light. Forty red curtains. A donkey.
THIS AMERICAN HERO WAS KILLED BY ONE OF HIS OWN MEN THAT SWITCHED SIDES AFTER FALLING FOR A LOCAL GIRL AND JOE BIDEN WON'T EVEN SAY HIS NAME SHARE IF YOU THINK THIS IS A DISGRACE
I remember when we had a bunch of WF members (mostly former military) insisting that Jake was the bad guy of that movie.
The point is the dishonesty and the hypocrisy. You attacked Afghanistan to beat your collective chests after 9/11, it was you lashing out indiscriminately after you were hurt. Period. Anything else, no matter how positive, was an afterthought. If it were genuinely about improving the lives of those people who hadn't asked for your help you would have honoured the duty of care you took on by violently intruding on their soil, not walked away from them when public opinion soured. Likewise you would apply that motivation consistently to your international dealings, not merely where it applies to your enemies and rivals.
Which is silly, since "alien sides with a planets residents against their own kind" is the premise of a bunch of unquestionably heroic characters when the planet is Earth.
You were done with me a while back, shit happens. It doesn't matter what was or wasn't in your post, I gave a valid point of order about how your response was a non sequitur, not took sides.
Out of curiosity, how would the women and girls who were turned into human chattel by the Taliban have gone about asking for help?
How much of that money went directly into the hands of defence contractors, arms manufacturers and the like?
If that was the case we could have wrecked the country and walked away. The 'afterthought' took twenty years and during that time the average amount of schooling an Afghani child received doubled, women's rights were upheld at least in the cities, and the actual life expectancy of Afghani increased compared to 2000 under the Taliban. Because people like you always forget they had been at war for decades prior to US/NATO operations. Four of the soldiers who died in the terrorist attack on the airport weren't even fucking born when 9/11 happened. And as far as 'public opinion souring, that had been waxing and waning for the decades we were there. What became evident is that the elected officials of Afghanistan were monumentally corrupt and their own people had given up on them. That's why they completely collapsed without US support. Feel free to lobby your government to intervene. Oh, wait, they've said they can't possibly project power to Afghanistan without US help, despite being the 5th richest country in the world.
Quite a bit. And that was used to fight the Taliban and protect the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan against attack. Funny how that works. $83 billion went to arm and train their security forces which just collapsed without a fight. That puts them at 55th in expenditures out of 140 countries just by US investment alone over the last 20 years. Around the same as Mexico. The problem was the Afghan government was undone by corruption, as we all know, and the media had been reporting on for years. https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/08/28/the-afghan-government-was-undone-by-its-own-corruption https://apnews.com/article/europe-business-lifestyle-b34e8480c8a0d80072fb2b4414914156 https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021...wallowed-up-us-investment-in-afghanistan.html I've seen plenty of stories about US being the source of corruption - certainly we were the source of the funds being embezzled. But that misses the point entirely. The US did not run the Afghan government. They chose their own representatives, established their own constitution and laws, and ultimately paid the price for their own inquity. The US had no legal right to go in and arrest corrupt officials. The Afghanis themselves chose not to do that. Why? In many cases, corruption and graft were so built into the culture that no one in power wanted to do so. As we've seen, the President of Afghanistan fled the country with over $120 million - in cash. That's palletfuls of corrupt money from US taxpayers. That was going to end sometime. It has. And now the people of Afghanistan are going to pay the price. In the meantime, US soldiers are protecting those trying to leave the country, sometimes with their lives. And by the latest figures I've seen, 80,000 Afghanis and 4,000 Americans have been evacuated.
Interesting sidebar in one of yesterday's press conferences. A reporter asked if refugees on planes are being COVID screened. The answer is yes, three times each: once before boarding, once while in the air, and once more after landing. In one batch of 1500 people, only 3 tested positive. In another batch of 1200, only one person tested positive.
They couldn't. And if the US didn't have a point to prove nothing would have been done. They would have carried on as they were being ignored by a West unmotivated revenge. The US did not invade Afghanistan to help those women. There is a repeated refrain throughout the last hundred year's history of the US acting internationally entirely to please the whims of it's own electorate them marketing that as being humanitarian, benign, supporting it's allies, bringing peace, prosperity, human rights, democracy, whatever to the world. That has been the hallmark of Empire since at the very least the Dutch, arguably going back to the Greeks. Certainly the British made a great deal out of presenting our actions as being motivated by a common good. We rule not to oppress you but to raise you out of ignorance and barbarism.* *provided it's convenient to do so The US could have chosen any time to do act in Afghanistan and if there was a genuine will to help them there wouldn't be this abandonment. Likewise it could have targeted other regimes which weren't already it's enemies, but capitalism and modern empires are inextricably intertwined and fiscal concerns in practise outweigh the ideals being expressed. Those womens lot is now going to be worse than it ever was because they trusted the US which deigned to promise protection and the Taliban are now motivated to be punitive and to make visible statements. Worse there is a whole generation of girls who have never known that oppression who ate now going to face whatever monstrous behaviour passes for reeducation.
You weren't the source of the corruption, you merely funded it? You had no legal authority to arrest corrupt officials? Funny how the legalities of intervention matter when it suits.
You mean after we helped them create their own government and Constitution (17 years ago), we should have gone in and done whatever we wanted to the people who ran it? Maybe, just maybe, we actually intended to help them set up their own legitimate government and always planned on eventually leaving? And yes, corruption is often a problem in less developed countries. But I guess the US should go around arresting officials who steal UN developmental aid next. I'm sure their governments would be fine with that, as well as the international community. No? And, as the UN is the source of the aid, clearly we need to throw a missle or two at their HQ. After all, they aren't the source of the corruption, they merely funded it. Yes, we were attacked, we invaded, we overthrew the Taliban and helped form a new government. And yes, we helped them for nearly 2 decades after that, but that does not mean we were in charge. Didn't the fact that both Afghanistan and Iraq award large contracts to non-US entities for oil, rare earths and other resources tell you we weren't actually controlling their governments? Or do you simply ignore anything that doesn't fit your preconceived notions? Your dogma makes your point of view on these extraordinarily narrow.
Of course, foreign companies are perfectly capable of lobbying the US. And many former or current US officials have sat on the executive boards of such companies.
The Afghan mineral rights went to the China Metallurgical Group Corporation. It is literally owned by the Chinese government. So no, that isn't a US multinational. The Afghanis kicked them out after 14 years. Why? They didn't actually develop any mineral sites. Instead, the state owned corp came with an espionage ring. One that was cooperating with the Haqqani network, a significant terrorist organization that is utilized by the Taliban. To do what? To hunt down Uighur Muslims and turn them over to China to be sent to the camps. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/2...-ring-mcc-mining-negotiations-mineral-wealth/
Fuck. One of the 13 was a PsyOper. I didn’t know him but he was Bravo 9. I was Alpha and Charlie 9. Two others were injured.
