You listed multiple major Empires of antiquity as part of the 'misery' of the Middle East which never engaged in them with anything more than trade - one of them being a Muslim nation. So yes, definitely some confusion on your part. Religious conservatism has arisen in places without these issues as well, such as the US South and remote areas of Africa. People are tribal, due to our evolution, and one of the few things that can unite large swathes of people is a religion or ideology. As some humans will always seek power, utlizing these things is always in play. Afghanistan isn't part of the Middle East. But regardless, yes, it's had a long history of conquest by foreign powers. None of that is unique to the West. But I'm not sure what your point is - yes, fundamentalism is a useful tool for leaders to use, and has been used successfully in many, many places, some even relatively prosperous and peaceful before the arrival of fundamentalism. Both 14thDoctor's and my dispute was not that this place isn't largely fundamentalist, but your earlier statement that it was a response to Western influence. No, it isn't, we just have the best sources from the Western tradition on encountering it, going back to Alexander. But from Alexander to the British involvement in the first Anglo-Afghan war of 1839 was a period of over two thousand years where Western involvement in no way, shape or form touched Afghanistan. Conquest and civil war has been a constant in this region. The Western Roman Empire, ruled by a hellenic culture, fell during the Crusades. The Iberian nations of Portugal, Castille, Navarre, Aragon, and Leon were fighting wars with al-Andalus. It was conquered initially by Berber Muslims, then they themselves were dominated by the Ummayid dynasty out of Egypt. At the time it was being run by the Almoravids, who revolted against the Ummayids under Ibn Yasin, who preached fundamentalist Islam that the Ummayid's were too lenient and that the role of Muslims was that of conquest and to destroy worldly opposition to Allah. Sense a theme here? In the meanwhile the Seljuk Turks were fighting with the Fatimid Caliphate over the remains of a weakened Byzantium, and the Normans were fighting to retake Sicily, which had been conquered by a Muslim Jihad by the combined forces of Ifriqya (mostly Tunisia and Libya) and Iberian al-Andalus 200 years before. Warfare was ongoing throughout the region, and had been for all of recorded history. True, but this is after their own conquests threatened the West, as described above. Charles Martel stopped the expansion of the Ummayids into Tours, France as far back as 782 AD. His opponent was a Ummayid commander who was born on the Red Sea coast of Arabia. Crusades certainly called people from areas not directly threatened, but then, so did the vast Islamic empires and their own calls to jihad. About 80 years before the Crusades a Jihad was called in India by Mahmud of Ghazni, a ruler of the Ghanznavid Empire, where he attacked and destroyed the Temple of Shiva. He was born in what today is modern Afghanistan. The multiple calls of jihad predate the Crusades by hundreds of years.
Maybe it's I just attribute intelligence to other posters, when clearly I shouldn't have. You stated we will never know how many of the casualties of the airport bombing were shot by US troops. You later presume that the US is not 'fighting evil' by stopping a car bomb, and that it is fitting that the US end in Afghanistan is with the massacre of children. You could have stated these things in any number of other ways. But you didn't. You presume the worst when it comes to the US, despite your own statement of ignorance on what truly happened. Either grotesquely stupid or bigoted. Your pick.
You're happy to believe a single unconfirmed tweet if it blames American forces for civilians deaths instead of ISIS-K suicide bombers, because you don't trust Americans not to lie. You're willing to accept Taliban/ISIS-K reports of civilian casualties from American drone strikes as though they'd have no reason to lie. You're ridiculous.
Yeah, he could have said 'It is possible that the US fired into the crowd, but we'll never know.' Instead of saying we'll never know how many people in the crowd the US killed. He could have acknowledged that it was very likely that the US was attempting to defend civilians at the airbase when they fired a missile at a car approaching the airport after multiple warnings were put out for another attack and the airport had been under rocket fire earlier in the day. Even if they were mistaken about this particular car. Sometimes you have to make the trolley choice between 1 and 5. But nope, it is fitting that the US massacres children.
He has now actually posted a link to a BBC article where multiple eyewitnesses said there was gunfire from the guard towers surrounding the airport - i.e. from Coalition forces. Also one report of a death with no blast injuries but a bullet wound to the back of the head. Now those could be Taliban sympathisers or plants. I dunno - they seemed pretty sincere and shaken up.
Every empire I listed has invaded Afghanistan at some point. However perhaps "foreign" would be a less contentious word than "western", the point still stands that perceived outside threats do lead to recourse to established cultural identifiers. Likewise your objection that Muslim cultures may have initiated many conflicts in no way actually addresses the analysis that a people placed unfortunately geographical and political terms will become involved in more conflicts and thus face more external threats.. Your objection that conservatism arises elsewhere sans such conditions is a strawman (though granted probably unintentional). No one claimed those conditions are necessary for religious conservatism to take hold, merely that their presence does almost without fail have that effect. The example you use of the deep south US is interesting and worth exploring. Do the proponents of radical evangelism not commonly refer to threats to their way of life? Do they not react to government, communism, homosexuality, regulation, vaccinations, liberalism, feminism, critical thinking in schools, atheism, evolution, etc by becoming more militant and threatening violence against dissenters?
Hell. *I* don't trust Americans not to lie. Sure. But, which is a more accurate statement. I do not doubt for one second US forces fired into the crowd when shit started happening. The majority of them aren't even 25 years old yet. They are reacting. and I do not doubt some of them fired their weapons.
You specifically stated 'the Middle East', which traditionally doesn't include Afghanistan. You also stated China, when you must have meant the Mongols. Ala ad-Din Muhammed II, Shah of the Kwharazmian Empire (located in todays Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Iran), decided to execute Genghis Khan's envoys. Khan was busy conquering China and wanted to establish trade relations with the Shah's empire. He sent some friendly Muslims to make contact, they were imprisoned, and then three Mongols, who the Shah had executed. Genghis pulled his main army out of China and slaughtered the Shah's forces. Misery, yes, but definitely self-imposed in that case. This is one of the biggest blunders in history. Agreed. No one is arguing that their fundamentalism isn't inherent to their culture. You are moving the goalposts. You've agreed that your take was that it was in reponse to Western threats was invalid, that's fine. The number of conflicts in the region that had nothing to do with the West are legion, and still ongoing. It's just a limited take. Yes, it often occurs in conjunction with, but there are notable exceptions - look at the MesoAmerican cultures that had very little in the way of known external threats for the overwhelming majority of their existence but still developed incredibly powerful religions that literally had the power of life and death over their adherents in multiple cultures across multiple empires separated by scores of centuries. Threat invites organization. Organization can be nationalism, it can be ideology, it can be religion. Religion is a very good and prominent example, but hardly unique. Look at Communism in the 20th century, for example. However, those who want to use these organizations don't need actual external threats. Just the perception of them. Again, the most famous example is Luddendorf's 'Stab in the Back', blaming the Jews for the collapse of Imperial Germany in WWI that was later parlayed by the Nazis into political power and eventually the holocaust. If a threat doesn't exist it is manufactured. Of course. That doesn't mean that they are justified in doing so because of an external threat. They've invented most of these threats whole cloth. There is very little valid to this world view. Different ideas don't threaten them, they threaten others to maintain their cultural dominance. This goes back to the founding of the South as an aristocratic and religious society that used religion to enslave and subvert. But regardless, we are far afield now.
We don't know. Eye witness testimony is always regarded by those who study these things as the least reputable. It is possible that such a thing happened, but that's not what was said. It is possible that ISIL gunmen opened fire, or Taliban gunmen, and that fire was exchanged between different armed groups in the region in the panic afterwards. If anything happened at all. And even if it was what happened, that doesn't change the fact that all the authorities agree that there was a large bomb explosion that killed a huge number of people that caused the confusion that precipitated any other acts - if they did occur. That's a whole lot of 'ifs' to be making declarative statements. And that's the point. He prejudged the issue and tried to deflect blame for the attack.
Nowhere did I state China invaded Afghanistan, nor does the historical nomenclature regarding what constitutes the Middle East matter one jot. That the people living there have a culture which faced and has been shaped by multiple invasions and perceived threats to their culture is. The Mughal Empire was set up in the aftermath of the decline of the Timurid Empire but to pretend it was a native extension of pre existing Afghan culture is intellectually dishonest. It was an Empire built across several previous state and imposing a culture on them. Relatively bloodless perhaps but still am invasion in the eyes of those whose world is being reshaped on their behalf. I'm not shifting any goalposts, I'm guiding you closer to what I opined in the first instance and you yet again went around the houses choosing to selectively misinterpret. You do that a fuckton to be perfectly honest and have a panache for filling reams of space with counterexample which don't actually address the point. No one is claiming the US caused the extremism we see today, nor is anyone arguing that said extremism is justified. They are saying that as a matter of strategy that violent incursions are not going to be an effective solution to a problem which has it's roots in violent incursions. Nor is attempting to impose values going to be an effective solution to a problem whose roots lie in imposing values. Did Christianity stick? Communism? Socialism? Of course not.
Key takehome. Much of the non US world mistrust the US as much as they mistrust the Taliban. That doesn't mean moral equivalence, it means a default setting where both are viewed as inherently untrustworthy. They may be wrong to do so but that perception is far more commonplace than you would probably like.
Yeah, but no one takes you seriously. And you? Is your level of mistrust towards both parties equal? You sure seem to love reminding everyone how popular and supported the Taliban are, which isn't something I see you doing when the subject is Trumpers or antivaxxers or any of today's more notable villains.
You said the Middle East while you were talking about Afghanistan. The Mongols, Sikhs, and Mughals all did invade Afghanistan, the Chinese not so much. The Sikhs, Mughals, and Chinese never invaded the Middle East. Spot261: No, me neither, but the Middle East has a unique position implied in it's name which means the region has seen far more invasions proportionally than any other part of the planet. Don't worry, the Mongols, Mughals, Sikhs and Chinese brought misery from further east too. Ongoing threat of invasion and domination creates a bunker mentality, a reliance upon the tribe and it's traditions for solidarity. Never said anything about this. But it misses on several points, but I'll leave you to bother to read up on it. Because... Here's an idea. Instead of making numerous historical examples that are objectively, factually wrong when you try to make a point, instead do your work ahead of time and confirm if your disparate assumptions and remembrances are actually correct. There's a whole lot of knowledge out there. Avail yourself of it. Again, this you? The Middle East in particular has been shaped by one Western military action after another for centuries, since long before your country existed, so of course everything will be viewed through that lens. That lens is the only one which really matters, especially when we are seeing the same blundering gaffes and bullying we ourselves were guilty of in times past. You keep pointing out the twenty years you were there as somehow offsetting that, but overlooking the fact that occupation after occupation bringing "western values" is exactly what led to the barbarism, religious extremism and widespread conservatism we see today. No, all of that existed long before we were there, especially in Afghanistan, that didn't see the boot of a Western soldier for 2100 years until 1839. For some reason it is de jure to proclaim that all the problems there are based on the West. That isn't to say quite a few of the more recent ones are, but this area has always seen war and death. We didn't go into Afghanistan because we were trying to impose our values. We went there because a terrorist cell in conjunction with the Taliban emirate used the country as a spring board to attack the US. 'Beating our chest', as you called it, when the planes smashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11. While we were there, we tried to help with democracy and women's rights. We eventually decided we couldn't help and left. The attacks on women's rights in particular long predate the US involvement - Ahmanullah Khan was deposed in 1928 because of his attempt to extend these types of rights. The list of greivances by the Pashtun tribe that started the Afghan civil war of 1928 were predominantly about allowing the rights of women. And oh by the way, your initial take was that we had a duty to stay because of the invasion, because the rights of these people would be curtailed by these Muslim fundamentalists once again. Which is it, Spot? Should we stay, or was there no chance of ever being successful if we did? Look, everyone is upset what is going to happen to the Afghani civil rights in general and to the civil rights in particular. I think this is why this has been so heated. But that's an Afghani issue, not a US or Western one. It is not to our detriment that we tried, only that we failed. But I agree with your later take, it is very doubtful we could have succeeded. That doesn't mean the US (and oh by the way, you guys were there too, again) didn't make massive mistakes. Only that it is unfortunate that such oppression is going to happen.
You haven't brought any facts into dispute, nowhere did I claim China invaded Afghanistan for instance, I stated misery came from that direction, as per the quote you just used. Nor did say the US was exclusively to blame, you drew that from my use of the word "west" possibly? In recent centuries the vast majority of incursions have been from the collective "west", but even that is splitting hairs, the point is the number of external threats, real or imagined, have been far greater than for most countries as a consequence of an unfortunate coincidence of features. You have spent several pages disputing this only to state Afghanistan has "long known war and blood". Are you loathe to consider any explanation of that or do you just like arguing? "Western" does not mean US. By most measures the UK is considered West, as are many other European nations. We have played far more of a role in the region down the centuries than you have and done more damage. You, however, have just spent the last twenty years repeating our mistake, which is why we are having this discussion. You went in to get a terrorist cell, which itself is sheer arrogance, but then you spent twenty years (in your words) trying to help. That's twenty years of trying to impose some semblance of your own political and social model onto a nation by force. Which is exactly the point I'm making. Not only was it disproportionate, arrogant and completely overstepping the mark to be there at all but you then went ahead and proved every suspicion about foreign interventions which had lent the Taliban any sense of legitimacy. When people started trusting your promises, when their very lives were in play as collateral, you walked away and left them to the consequences. I stand by my point. You had no right being there but given you were and people started to trust your word the game had changed. You had gone from being aggressors to protectors but proved you could only really be trusted to see one of those through. If you really had to be there you had a moral duty to make your efforts multi generational. Or just not be there in the first place.
I was clear in making the distinction between moral equivalence and the specific case of "trust". The US is a far more advanced and overtly benign nation than Taliban era Afghanistan, but if the question is one of honesty in particular then it's reputation is poor. Honestly I would trust the word of neither.
How would you have responded to 9/11? Obviously not in an arrogant way. I'm so excited to hear your humble, proportionate and appropriate stepping response. I love how you're able to angry about America going there in the first place, angry about America sticking around, and angry about America withdrawing all at the same time. But no, describing your position as "America can do no right" makes me the asshole.
Two out of three. America sticking around I approved of, I just never expected they would. Never called you an asshole though. As for responding to 9/11, I don't know, but invading a country full of innocent people to make a point would not have been high on the agenda.
Time to correct some of the more egregious dishonesty here. I neither offered as support, nor indicated that I believed "a single unconfirmed tweet". Neither at any point did I indicate that I accepted any claims made by ISIS or the Taliban. I posted a link to witness reports carried by the BBC, on a report from their Afghanistan correspondent. Further, here is the Pentagon themselves saying that there "was gunfire" and that they are "not in a position to deny" that it came from their forces. These things provide credible reason to suggest that some of the people killed were killed by American gunfire. Finally, the US military and intelligence establishment is not synonymous with "Americans". Your attempt to imply equivalence between these and to accuse me of bigotry towards the latter based on distrust of the former is highly sinister. For someone who claims that the occupation was about "helping Afghans", you are remarkably quick to dismiss their testimony. The trope that eyewitness reporting is unreliable does not extend to people hallucinating about gunfire and dead bodies. The reality, as I have said, is that you apply a high level of suspicion to anything going against the official narrative, which you are eager to promote. And if there were ISIL or Taliban gunmen, you can bet your bottom dollar that the official narrative would include that. Bullshit. My posting was in direct rebuttal to your declarative statements, mindlessly repeating the claims of US authorities. I specifically indicated ignorance of what had actually happened with the shooting, and at no point did I blame anyone else for the bombing but ISIS-K. Not "fitting" - that's once again something you have invented whole cloth. I said that there was a "dark logic" about this being the last act of the US in Afghanistan. And there is, given the horrific record of the last 20 years.
OK, Spot, first you said the Middle East, not Afghanistan. So what misery exactly came from China to the Middle East? Or are you conflating the terms still? And if so, same question in regards to Afghanistan. Again, you explicitly stated that all its problems came from Western intervention. You literally said 'It was the only lens that mattered', seeing the current problems vis a vis Western intervention. As to the just arguing, it's a debate forum. This is a ridiculous strawman. How dare I disagree with you on a debate board? LOL. The US is included in the West, and you are stating that we made the exact same error. You are explicitly stating that the US is the latest in a series of Western interventions, and that is what accounts for the 'barbarism and extremism' in these countries. I've already refuted that. But then, the US role in Afghanistan is not the same as the Brits - there was no attempt by the Brits to significantly improve the quality of life in Afghanistan in their forays there in the 19th century. Nation building wasn't on the agenda. It was a geopolitical response to Russia during the Great Game to counter possible Russian expansion and threats to the Raj. The terrorist cell was a defacto protectorate of the Taliban. We went into overthrow the Taliban and help the Northern Alliance take back the territory they lost. The Taliban had been aided by al-Qaeda and the ISI, Pakistani Intelligence. LOL. Legitimacy? So why was the Taliban in control of 3/4 of the nation BEFORE the US backed the Northern Alliance to take the country back? The Northern Alliance was the remnants of the previous Islamic Republic of Afghanistan which were set up by the Peshawar Accords. External forces helped the Taliban overthrow them. Why did Pakistani support not deprive them of legitimacy? Why didn't al-Qaeda? You have such a narrow view of this. There are many, many actors involved, with many different agendas. There were six different factions in the period between the Peshwar Accords set up the first Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the capture of Kabul by the Taliban. All of whom were backed by foreign powers. We left them with billions in foreign aid, trained their military for 20 years, and all those weapons that are being touted by the Taliban are US weapons we left them to defend themselves with. And let me see the promise that we would be there forever. Your desire for that to be true does not make it a reality. The Afghanis own corruption and refusal to fight meant those people are in danger. But again, you blame everything on the West in general and the US in particular. Where is the Afghan populace's role in this? Why didn't they choose to fight? They collapsed immediately. We stayed for a generation and gave the people there every chance to defend themselves. Most of the US soldiers who died in the recent airport suicide bombing weren't born when 9/11 happened. We spent the equivalent of 25 years of their gross domestic product in fighting that war and sending them aid. All while our own national debt skyrocketed. In the last 20 years the US was in Afghanistan estimate say 700 thousand US citizens died due to lack of universal health care. We don't have the right to refocus our attention on that? What's more, NATO went into Afghanistan. Your country was there too - but pulled out its military 8 years ago. NATO troops actually outnumbered US troops at the beginning of this year - 7,000 to 2,500. But all the NATO troops pulled out prior, leaving the US to handle the final evacuation. Germany, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Finland, Albania, North Macedonia and Luxembourg all pulled out troops within the last 3 months. Why couldn't they stay if they wanted to? Because they couldn't support such a force in a land-locked central Asian country without US logistics. Of course, many of the rich countries could, but they don't spend the money on their military. They spend it on their own citizens. Your opinion is noted. That doesn't mean it is anything more than an opinion.
You mean like a US general in charge of the evacuation saying there were ISIL gunmen? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/26/us-military-personnel-in-bomb-attacks-at-kabul-airport As to eyewitness testimony, clearly the middle of a crowd with bombs going off is the place were everyone is going to get the best vantage and react the most calmly and measuredly. That doesn't mean they are lying, but it certainly could mean they didn't see what they thought they saw. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ie/...stimony-eyewitness-mistakes-what-we-get-wrong And it's possible it did happen. But neither one of us know for sure, so couching it in the terms 'We will never know how many people the US shot' is a leading statement. We don't know if they shot any. Bullshit. The comment in question was a deflection when I stated that the US stopping a car bomb was the lesser of two evils. Your reaction to that was mocking the US for 'fighting evil' and that we'd never know how many people the US shot in the first attack. This is classic deflection. Well, great. Now the US and NATO are no longer there. I'm sure everything will be just peachy now. People die in wars. Sometimes the choice is between some and a lot. Absolutely with Western military power, the US in particular, the numbers could be orders of magnitude higher if there was no care excercised to mitigate that by these militaries. But that's just me parroting the US official line. I'm wrong, because in the context of a known threat to the airport, one where two large scale attacks already happened (the 2nd being rocket fire at the crowd stopped by US defenses), the US MUST have fired a missile at an innocent driver. Thinking that they wouldn't have done that unless they had tangible reason to think that the car was being used for an attack in that enviornment and in that context, that's just mindless. You know, because of the dozens of cars around the airport that we had already destroyed. Oh, wait, no, only this one, only in this context. Spare me your pedantry.
NATO nations which were bound by treaty to make at the least a minimal effort to aid their ally. An ally who then caused the deaths of over 100,000 Afghans whilst failing in every long term objective except killing OBL. You failed because whether you are willing to accept it or not you were the latest in a long line of external aggressors, crusaders, invaders, whatever word satisfies your quibbling and evasion arrayed against a people locked between major powers and their interests for millennia. A people who were never going to truly accept you or buy into your claims of offering a safer future. A people whose suffering will now be far worse as a consequence of what limited collaboration did happen. So again, stop playing the victim, stop trying to convince us all the poor nuclear superpower is anything here but the architect of it's own blundering follies or deserving of sympathy. Few outside your borders will hear the violins playing for you. They're much more concerned about the people actually suffering the damage your adventuring has created.
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/...an-to-rely-on-chinese-money-spokesperson-says Don't worry about the Taliban going broke, China's gonna help them out.
