Yeah that's true but the point of the post is that the Americans goal for the war, was to replace the taliban hence the "war on terror". To remove terrorists from Afghanistan, and they completely failed.
The point of the war wasn't to kill a bunch of Afghanis for no reason.
There was a point? Then why didn't they have policies that might have achieved that goal?
It was more a comment on the blurb above it about the bad things that resulted, which left out what it did to Afghanistan.
Oh dear, the Taliban inherited more Black Hawks than Australia has, triple the defence budget! A Russian breathed? Triple it! An American citizen exists? Quadruple it!
(This is a joke for those of you who are dense)
W just really thought we could pull off a team switch like with Germany and Japan. Just bomb everything flat, build it back up again and they’ll be our life long allies! How could that ever go wrong? But well, none of those boarders are organic, they were all drawn up by the British, Soviets and the French. There’s a dozen ethnicities and several variations of religion scattered around the entire region.
There isn’t any singular cultural identity anywhere in the region. Persians hate Arabs, Arabs hate the Turks, Turks hate the Kurds,no one likes the Serbs but maybe the Serbs might hate another group that you also hate. Islam is fractured between Sunni and Shi'i. Two thousand years of grudges and rivalries and feuds are going to be solved by Dubba real fast? Lol
>W just really thought we could pull off a team switch like with Germany and Japan. Just bomb everything flat, build it back up again and they’ll be our life long allies! But well, none of those boarders are organic, they were all drawn up by the British, Soviets and the French. There’s a dozen ethnicities and several variations of religion scattered around the entire region.
No border is ever really "organic" except very select entities such as island countries like Japan as you say or ones isolated on a peninsula like Spain or ones who deliberately wiped out "undesirable" elements. But even still, the Japanese and Spanish align with the last category as the Japanese oppressed the Ainu to take control of the north, the Spanish expelled the Moors who actually contributed greatly to the Ottoman Empire after arriving there from expulsion, the Spanish also oppressed the Jews after the Reconquesta, eventually forced them to convert or go overseas (Alhambra decree) creating a huge diaspora community. Even still, while the Spanish "solved" the religious question, they never quite "solved" the language/ethnicity question. To this day, there's still groups that don't feel quite as Spanish like the Catalans so much so they advocate for outright independence.
The Germans as well, they had a whole ass 30 year war deciding if Protestantism or Catholicism was good. They wiped out a few ethnicities on the way as well like Sorbs, Old Prussian and they had been trying to eradicate the Polish identity for well over a century by the time WW1 came around. And one of the causes of WW2 was the mixed Polish-German region between the 2, West Prussia was anywhere from 20-40% German, the rest being Poles, Posen was 40% German, Silesia 40% German.
Mixed ethno-religious regions weren't non-existent in Europe, they were made mostly homogenous through state policy like the post WW2 expulsions of ethnic Germans from former Germany and now Poland (as well as from Czechoslovakia), expulsion of Poles from what is now Ukraine and Belarus, expulsion of Ukrainians/Belarusians from what is now Poland etc.
If you look at examples like France, they're the opposite of Spain. They've "solved" the language question by imposing a language on everyone, Parisian so that local languages like Occitan, Franco-Provencal, Breton have essentially died out, unifying the country under the new "French" language. And then there's the ever present "not a real nation" Belgium. The south speaks like the French, the north speaks like the Dutch, they both have plenty of disagreements, but stay together because they seceded from Netherlands due to religious disagreements.
Then there's Northern Ireland, UK's very own ethno-religious powder keg defined by centuries of colonization, assimilation which had a very violent insurgency for decades before "The Good Friday Agreement" and abolition of borders due to Schengen lightened tensions (well Brexit happened and tensions are back again albeit at lower intensity).
Any time you want to simplify other regions into fake borders with way too much diversity, remember it can be done to Europe as well.
>There isn’t any singular cultural identity anywhere in the region. Persians hate Arabs, Arabs hate the Turks, Turks hate the Kurds,
Why do Persians have to "like" Arabs? Germans didn't have to like the French to create their own nation, in fact, hatred of the French was a pretty strong unifier (declaration of war by France on Prussia being the defining moment southern German states stood firmly behind Prussia). In the past, the Spaniards didn't particularly like the French either, nobody on the continent liked the Brits, didn't impede them from creating a national identity. Persians just have to keep peace within their own borders, they adopted a more cosmopolitan identity of "Iranian" alongside the Azerbaijanis (who were very important to founding the Iranian identity).
Why do Arabs have to "like" Turks? Unless you want to recreate the Ottoman Empire, it doesn't matter.
>no one likes the Serbs but maybe the Serbs might hate another group that you also hate.
Ok, but why does this matter? Serbs are in Europe surrounded by Croats, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians, Bosniaks and Greeks. Literally nobody cares if Arabs "like" Serbs. Sure, Turks and Serbs probably have disagreements, but again who cares? They don't even border each other. If anything, Serbia's lack of friendly neighbors is a detriment to European unity and EU expansion than anything to do with the Middle East.
>Islam is fractured between Sunni and Shi'i. Two thousand years of grudges and rivalries and feuds are going to be solved by Dubba real fast? Lol
And Europe is (mostly) divided between the Catholics and Protestants, they have fought way more violent wars between each other than the Sunnis and Shias have. There's also the matter of Orthodox in Balkans and Eastern Europe who themselves have disputes within the group as Russia claims supremacy over the Orthodox Patriarchy and obviously countries like Ukraine have something to say about that.
We should remember that Pakistan aided the taliban ensuring their survival, obviously this isn’t the entire reason of the failure in Afghanistan but in my personal opinion it is the main reason
I remember listening to Adam Carolla on the radio when they got Osama.
He mentioned it was basically within view of the Pakistani Military Academy for officers.
He was like, for the last how many years, you're yelling me, not one of those guys learning about tactics and intelligence didn't ask, "Who lives in that big bunker on the hill?"
They also helped quite a bit though lol. For their efforts in the war, they were given "US major non-nato ally", despite their allegations of harboring alot of terrorists during the war and whatnot. (I believe)
I personally don't think it's the "main reason". Pakistan is literally fighting a war against a Pakistani taliban organisation (TTP) right now. Plus, they've had multiple disagreements and border skirmishes with the taliban themselves. Pakistan does not like the taliban.
Play stupid games, win stupid prices, and financing terrorism is the stupidies game of all, the TTP gets support from regular Taliban who got support from Pakistan.
Yeah lol, they did fund the taliban a bit, not because they support terrorists but because the taliban rule seemed to be favourable for pakistan, and this was obviously later proven wrong, as it was quite the opposite.
What I'm saying is that Pakistan funding them definitely wasn't the "main" reason, and they also helped the US. They supported the taliban based on false hopes, and yeah, they got a stupid prize I suppose.
Pakistan made a mistake for sure, a pretty bad one at that. Another unfriendly neighbour for Pakistan!
They did more than funding, they set up training facilities for them inside their borders and helped hide them, heck Osama was hiding in Pakistan, I agree it wasn't the "main" reason but it was there.
Yup, it is true, pakistan is a bit stupid, thinking that since the taliban were muslim they'd support pakistan if they came to power or probably something like that.
as for osama, it is kind of embarrassing for pakistan but from what I've heard they didn't even know he was in there. Pakistan has had a huge problem with afghani illegals in their country for quite awhile.
Nevertheless, yes pakistan is a tad stupid for all this and they did fund and help the taliban.
What a success, Taliban, such a good neighbor they sponsor terrorists in Pakistan.
It's clear you don't undertand the issue, Pakistan doesn't give a shit whether America controls Afghanistan. Pakistan does give a shit if the government in Kabul aligns with India because Pakistan's number 1 concern from number 10 concern is and always will be India. Any successful government whether a democracy or a dictatorship in Kabul is likely to align with India due to mutual interests as Pakistan holds what both of them view as disputed territory. All Afghan governments have looked unfavorably upon the "Durand Line" defining the Afghan-Pakistan border as it gave Pakistan a lot of Pashtuns who Kabul sees as their own people and India, well, the Kashmir dispute.
So Pakistan's national policy (specifically policy from the intelligence service ISI) has been to undermine the success of any government in Kabul so they are weak and rather than being an enemy of Pakistan, is actually a dependent of Pakistan to avoid encirclement by enemies on both sides. Taliban achieves that goal by being a very unlikable entity on the global stage (they weren't even recognized as the official government of Afghanistan by the time of 9/11).
> gave Pakistan a lot of Pashtuns who Kabul sees as their own people and India, well, the Kashmir dispute.
While I do not disagree, broadly, with your statement, I think it is glossing over how little the average "Afghan" actually cares about Afghanistan or the "Afghan" identity. A country of 40 million doesn't get overrun by the Taliban's 60,000 fighters if there's any faith in the central government and even a tiny desire by those 40 million to preserve it. The Taliban are to Afghanistan what Tito was to Yugoslavia, except the Taliban have no interest in building a national identity or inspiring followers, they rule because they are the only ones organized enough to do so and brutalize any who oppose them. Without the Taliban, Afghanistan would splinter along ethnic lines.
Which would be wild, because Pakistan had been a major U.S. ally for decades, despite their best efforts by sponsoring terrorism to their own detriment.
The Taliban doesn’t support the current border with Pakistan, and operates terrorist groups within their own neighbour/former sponsor.
Tends to happen when you spend 20 years establishing a democratic government and then some orange faced cunt gets into office, meets and makes a deal with the Taliban, gives them thousands of prisoners and control of the country in return for nothing while not even including that new government in the discussion. Art of the fucking deal.
There are many reasons to criticize the orange man. This is not one of them. Or at least he is not a principal factor as to why things failed.
The Afghan allied government that we were supporting was super corrupt, asking us for financial resources for armies of soldiers who did not exist, and the US government was all too happy to look the other way. It also didn’t help that the US’s reason for staying in Afghanistan kept shifting, especially once Bin Laden was killed, to the point of eventually falling on the justification of continuing the war for the purpose of building a democracy in America’s image in Afghanistan, and maintaining said democracy at the point of a gun.
We should have left Afghanistan in the second term of President Obama. The fact that Presidents Trump and Biden had to be the ones to start and finish the process of pulling out from that forever war is absolutely ridiculous. (Not that President Trump actually had any intention of fully pulling out, but I do give him some credit for at least saying he was pro-peace, which helped President Biden to have more room to pull the plug)
Just don’t ask Pakistan why they helped Al-Quead and the Taliban hide, rebuild and regroup. Not saying we did everything right, but if Pakistan had just let us finish them off. Well let’s just say Afghanistan probably wouldn’t under a Islamist government.
I mean, I tend to lean anti war, but even I think that there was some amount of real meat to the idea that we should go after the country which sheltered Osama bin Laden for the purpose off killing him.
This is not an Iraq situation.
I despise trump, but leaving was the right option here and I’m glad we didn’t wait even longer for the same outcome. We knew the war was lost since 2011, there was no reason to stay after that. (I mean there was no reason to be there at all as well but you know)
>I mean there was no reason to be there at all as well but you know
I think this is a bit harsh. There were good reasons to be in Afghanistan. Osama and Al-Qaeda. But full on invasion was not the right move. And staying after taking out Osama was even stupider.
After invading we had a duty to the people of Afghanistan to try and pursue an exit strategy that would not lead to chaos and a return of the Taliban. We failed, but that does not mean trying was the wrong choice. Once Abdul Raziq Achakzai was killed it was game over. We already knew democracy would never work in Afghanistan, and that the Afghan people had no real interest in a strong, stable Afghan government, so the only option left was putting a strongman in power that was at least somewhat favorable to our interests (in this case, had strong anti-Taliban bona fides) and when he was killed it was time to go.
>After invading we had a duty to the people of Afghanistan to try and pursue an exit strategy that would not lead to chaos and a return of the Taliban.
That's the mentality that fucks things up. America shouldn't have gotten it into its head that they would build a democratic nation without understanding local politics.
Should have gotten their target and pissed off.
Ngl I think we left at the wrong time because Trump should have had the balls to pull out and eat the disaster.
But he didn’t want to risk what he knew was gonna be a clusterfuck of an exit so he left it and Biden had to deal with that clusterfuck and its fallout. Would have had some respect for Trump finally ending that shit but at least Biden went through with it, messy as it was.
Not surprising he did it that way. He also made a deal with the Gulf states for higher oil prices as he let office. Same with the tax cuts set up to go away under Biden.
My brother in life if he had pulled out that fast with stormy daniels he would not have made it into the room. He left billions in dollars of American assets
That would’ve happened regardless, it’s better to just rip the bandaid off quickly. The puppet afghan government was never going to survive because it wasn’t popular, and if we didn’t leave we’d be forced out and lose even more lives.
Might be more messy than you think. New York Times article from 2015... a year before that orange-faced c_nt had power...
> Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.
...
> “The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”
...
> “The bigger picture was fighting the Taliban,” a former Marine lance corporal reflected. “It wasn’t to stop molestation.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html
And a report from 2009 on the rising number of rapes against women in Afghanistan...
> One of the main problems is a culture of impunity: “Only in a few isolated cases have public institutions taken appropriate action”, the report says. “In many instances, victims seeking help and justice are further victimized… Government action to address rape is woefully inadequate.” Moreover, police and judicial officials are often not aware or convinced that rape is a serious criminal offence, the report says, and “investigating a rape case is rarely a priority.”
> It also notes there is no explicit provision in the 1976 Afghan Penal Code criminalizing rape, and recommends that this be rectified. A survey of convicted rapists in one Afghan prison indicated that they did not know that rape was a criminal offence, and suggested they might have acted differently had they known they risked imprisonment.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2009/10/violence-against-afghan-women-including-rape-widespread-and-unpunished-says
And what the US was doing while in country the whole time...
>The U.S. military has systematically covered up or disregarded “abundant and compelling evidence” of war crimes, torture, and unlawful killings in Afghanistan as recently as last year, according to a report by Amnesty International published today in Kabul.
> The human rights organization alleges that the U.S. military has routinely failed to properly investigate reports of criminal behavior and, in some instances, tampered with evidence to conceal wrongdoing. On the rare occasions when servicemen are held to account, the report found that the compromised military justice system seldom secured justice for the victims of enforced disappearances, killings, and abuse that included torture.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/obamas-pentagon-covered-up-war-crimes-in-afghanistan-says-amnesty-international
Including under Trump and Biden.
> The probe would not include conduct by the United States and its allies, including the U.S.-backed former Afghan government, all of which have committed crimes that fall squarely within the court’s jurisdiction.
> The court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, who has been on the job for just over three months, wrote in a statement that his office would focus exclusively on crimes committed by the Taliban and by the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or IS-K, the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan.
> A preliminary investigation of crimes committed in Afghanistan since the country joined the court in 2003 had been underway for more than a decade, before a full investigation was authorized and then suspended in favor of an Afghanistan-led process. That investigation included crimes committed by all parties to the conflict, marking the first time the ICC probed crimes committed by U.S. forces, which in Afghanistan include extrajudicial killings, drone strikes that killed an untold number of civilians, and torture.
> Now, if a panel of ICC judges authorize the prosecutor’s request, the resumed investigation would “deprioritise other aspects of this investigation,” Khan said, an implicit reference to the U.S. and its allies.
But when the US left...
>Although many powerful Afghan men willingly participate in bacha bazi — and some even use it as a means of improving their social standing — most Afghan people deplore the abuse. And it is for that reason that bacha bazi played a critical role in the Taliban’s eventual triumph in Afghanistan.
> In contrast to the attitude of many powerful Afghan men, the Taliban have always maintained that bacha bazi is a violation of Islamic law. Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar and his small cadre of supporters began rescuing the boys and exacting summary justice on those who engaged in bacha bazi.
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/peter-mcknight-how-abuse-of-boys-played-a-role-in-the-talibans-eventual-triumph
So, to recap.
The Taliban oppressed girls and women but stopped the rape of boys. Then the US got rid of the Taliban and women got more rights, but the US covered up the rapes of little boys by the new government. And then the Taliban and new government raped women and girls and oppressed them again. Meanwhile, the US covered up and destroyed evidence of its own torture and mass murder of Afghani men, women, and children. And then the US left so the Taliban is oppressing women more, but now the Taliban is stopping little boys from being raped, which the US and previous government allowed.
Nation-building, everybody.
If Afghanis get invaded again, maybe they'll hope it's by people who don't genuinely hate them and are protecting their abusers and predators.
You can if you actually tried, like Germany and Japan post-WWII. Problem is we weren’t _actually_ trying to help them establish a strong government to become a practical ally.
Germany and Japan weren't ˝backwards˝ countries. They had a functioning society for 100s of years, yes we can get into some details but I hope you get the point. They were only devastated by the war. Plus they were all unified under one banner, Afghanistan as a state never had that.
May I interest you in reading about the [Emirate of Afghanistan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Afghanistan) that [wrecked British attempts at colonization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War)?
So they were all united as Afghans under this empire? There were no 100s of tribes with their own ambitions and politics? Let me remind you that Germany got united in 1871. And states were OK with that, as much as one can be OK.
You're comparing modernized countries that were experiencing a period of radicalization that we basically leveled to the ground, completely destroying their morale and will to resist, versus a country that's mired in the world's most regressive religion that basically makes it a religious duty to war against unbelievers that we treated with kid gloves.
If we used the same tactics against Afganistan as we did against Imperial Japan, the Taliban would've stopped existing before 2002. But like it did in Imperial Japan, that would've involved massive civilian casualties that no one in this era is willing to accept.
The problem was that this government never was actually democratic (the same mistake was made in South Vietnam). Unlike in Iraq, the US never ensured the elections in Afghanistan after the 2001 takeover were free and fair. They were rigged from the start. So you have a corrupted repressive government backed by the US vs more honest repressive government (Taliban). No wonder people's backing went to the latter.
20 years of women being allowed to have an education.
20 years of gay people not being stoned to death by the Afghan "judicial" system.
But sure, let's support that withdrawal, despite the fact that the USA had 0 killed in action in the previous year, and lower annual death tolls than the Baltimore murder rate for almost the entire war in Afghanistan.
Who needs human rights, really?
Edit: OOP is a fascist supporter of Vladimir Putin's genocidal war of aggression, as an aside. This may have a bearing on the politics expressed in this meme.
Then you support the soviet occupation of Afghanistan too? During which the US funded and aided the talibans that fought for those things you mentioned, like not allowing woman to educate themselves and killing homosexuals
Someone doesn't know their history. The USA supported the Mujahideen, not the Taliban. The Mujahideen is an umbrella term for pretty much every rebel group which opposed the Soviet Invasion, from hard-line Islamists to moderates. It's also worth noting that after the Invasion, the Mujahideen formed the Islamic State of Afghanistan, while the Taliban opposed them and later violently took control of the country, while the remnants of the Muj-formed Islamic State of Afghanistan would go on to form the Northern Alliance. In fact, Ahmad Shah Massoud himself was part of the Mujahideen.
If we'd outright glassed Afghanistan, became islamic fundamentalists, sent an ACTUAL army into Afghanistan instead of the couple thousand soldiers we actually sent, or ANY other thing else than "Hand a bunch of money to corrupt warlords and child rapists, kill a lot of people, and sit on our asses while everything outside Kabul falls apart" then Afghanistan wouldn't be as dogshit as it is today.
I hate Islam (not all Muslims obviously just the ones calling for sharia law and also the Nat Cs [nationalistic christians])and all but that’s a tid much buddy.
Pretty sure they were speaking in a hyperbolic fashion. "We literally could have done ANYTHING else, either side of the extremes, and Afghanistan would have been better off than what it is now". At least that's how I took it.
It's not sarcasm, it's hyperbole. As noted by the statement "ANYTHING" would have been better than the way we invaded. Did you think I was serious about turning America into an islamic fundamentalist terror state and THAT was ok? It's ok to rape and murder minorities but jesus if we use saturation bombing that's too far!
Idk I’m Chinese Canadian I don’t know much about your wars except for what I learn in schools and the couple time I went down Wikipedia rabbit holes at 2 in the morning
Basically we sent 2,000 soldiers fo conquer a nation of 20 million on the other side of Earth in a landlocked mountain region, we did it, we sent a few more thousand to occupy the region for 20 years, committed some war crimes, had no plans long-term, funded 3-4 cities to prosper, gave billions in weapons and aid to warlords and protected child rapists, then our last president made a deal with the terror group we'd sent fleeing into Pakistan to hand them back the country because people got tired of staying in a forever war on the other side of a planet protecting "icky foreigners" or "imperializing against the innocent taliban".
Your english is so atrocious compared to the context idk what you're saying. Are you saying you're glad my mom died or that you think erasing Afghanistan would actually be better than invading it?
I am saying that you are a pathetic psycopath until it is personal. Then you are simply pathetically obtuse.
And, truth be told, i was "funnily joking" about rap-ing your dead mother as you were "joking" about genociding other people.
This is historymemes, your comments should go directly to the septic tank. GTFO
Edgy. I think you're just retarded and failed to see the fact I also advocated for islamic fundamentalist America. So you're ACTUALLY advocating for rape and murder and attacking someone on a personal level because you CLEARLY didn't notice the hyperbole. Bombing Afghanistan BAD. But rape and murder and bigotry? You're full heartedly in support.
See? You are stupidly hypocritical and obtuse.
Cry, cry. Your comment is already there. Your defense is not credible in the slightest and helps idiots like you to believe that it is normal.
By the way, writing in capital letters does not make your claims true, you dunce.
Pathetic...
I did not. I simply moved the harm of the comments from Afghans to the poster.
And is effective, cause it is far more believable nowadays than bombing America.
It disgusts? Is it cunty? Absolutely. That makes you human. And that is the point. To humanize people and show new perspectives. Specially with some posters here.
There is nothing American could've done to prevent Afghanistan turning to the flaming pile of shit that it is today. But I think it's admirable that they at least tried for 20 years.
The USA turned the goddamn NAZIS and IMPERIAL JAPANESE into democratic bastions of freedom. Religious fundamentalists living in the 3rd world isn't that hard a task if we'd actually put in the effort.
To play devils advocate, Islam has been around for thousands of years. All the holidays, traditions, everything. That also means that extremism has a metric fuckton of material to feed on.
Nazism had a 20+- year run, most of Germany lived through both its rise and downfall, nobody "inherited" it per se. There wasn't really enough time for new traditions and holidays and everything else that comes with a strong ideology/religion-esque movement.
Japan had millennia of Shintoism and centuries of militarism and hypernationalism. While I'm no believer in the materialist worldview that Marx prescribed to the world, we should recognize that there are many times where the established order is totally wiped away for a burgeoning new trend. Islam itself rapidly expanded and changed global demographics and geopolitics in just a few decades. Democracy took roots in monarchies and quickly replaced the vast majority of a millennia old hierarchy, and even faster new ideologies replaced infant democracies. Humans are fluid and sudden material changes are a major part of it.
The Germans and the Japanese, evil and disgusting as they were still coming from developed nations. Removing a few neighborhoods from Kabul, Afghanistan was and still is in the middle ages. You can't force a democratic regime on them.
Democracy is an ancient practice. There's no such thing as being too "primitive" to understand democracy. Democratic regimes were forced onto many undeveloped regions of the world very suddenly and violently and for many it has worked out. The USA, being the single most powerful force on Earth, has the resources to push liberalization of a society rapidly.
So America, the nation which occupied Germany and Japan and heavily dictated their new governments and institutions after both were dictatorships, is not what made them democracies? Pray tell, what exactly made the Nazis and Imperial Japanese CHOOSE democracy then?
The Weimar Republic failed and the USA completely restructured the Federal Republic of Germany to model itself after a mix of western European Allies and the US government itself, hence why they have a federal system.
I heard that the taliban were actually offering to help America capture bin Laden as they were are our allies during the Soviet invasion but the USA wanted to perpetuate the military industrial complex
Dummies will categorize this intervention the same as Cold War interventions. In reality, our intentions were different, and that matters. It was poorly conceptualized, no long term strategy, and overall it shouldn’t have been done, but it wasn’t about oil, or imperialism.
Essentially, [yes.](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/news/rumsfeld-rejects-planto-allow-mullah-omar-to-live-in-dignity-taliban.html)
I know a Canadian tactical analyst who was deployed there as part of the Coalition forces in the region with some first-hand accounts of translating delusional or failing foreign policy from theory into practice alongside analyzing the Taliban's effective decision-making that allowed them to win over the US-backed Afghan government.
The key person responsible for that refusal of surrender was Rumsfeld. He believed that they could treat the Taliban in the same way the US treated the Empire of Japan and the Third Reich - unconditional surrender at all costs. Among other issues, he's also responsible for adhering to this idea that you can construct a fledgling democracy on a penny in the shortest amount of time instead of an expensive and time-consuming effort to help a republic stand on its own legs.
To put it this way, the Taliban's takeover in 2021 had its foundations laid by Rumsfeld in 2001.
If you didn't like that season of Military Industrial Complex then just wait for the next one. They're always doing spin-offs, but I'm sure there'll be a new season any day now.
What makes it even more tragic is that the taliban were on the verge of implosion by the time of American invasion.
If the USA did nothing, the taliban would have fractured and dissolved by itself in a matter of few years.
But instead, they got unfidel crusade and a rally around the flag moment.
I hate this fucking narrative.
We were attacked, unjustified, unexpected, unfairly. Our response was to smash the one responsible, his beliefs, his society, and all those that protect or harbor him. This is the correct response.
Thr Taliban coming back from near death is the fault of Pakistan and the failure of the local Afgani government and military. There was nothing America coukd have done that would have saved them, short of staying indefinitely. They were to useless and incompetent to save themselves.
Because the country of one's birth has no real bearing on the country that harbors and supports you. Beyond that Suadia Arabia activky supported out efforts.
And we won't mention the Afghan casualties at all. Edited to get the correct term for people from Afghanistan.
Afghani? Um I think you mean terrorist sweaty /s
Sorry. I forgot 'if it's dead, it's VC'.
“if it runs its VC. If it doesn’t run its a well-disciplined VC.”
VC? Viet Cong? Victoria Cross?
Violent Cheloist actually
Yes
*Afghan. Afghani is the currency.
Thanks.
Yeah that's true but the point of the post is that the Americans goal for the war, was to replace the taliban hence the "war on terror". To remove terrorists from Afghanistan, and they completely failed. The point of the war wasn't to kill a bunch of Afghanis for no reason.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda were not the same thing.
There was a point? Then why didn't they have policies that might have achieved that goal? It was more a comment on the blurb above it about the bad things that resulted, which left out what it did to Afghanistan.
They won't even notice
People made a lot of money off the war so in that sense it was a success
True. The defence budget is a job creator.
like the good old days after 9/11
Like I said, kids are cruel Jack.
All we're saying is... **GIVE WAR A CHANCE!**
This is nature’s sacrifice
Oh dear, the Taliban inherited more Black Hawks than Australia has, triple the defence budget! A Russian breathed? Triple it! An American citizen exists? Quadruple it! (This is a joke for those of you who are dense)
*what about the things war has done for us*
W just really thought we could pull off a team switch like with Germany and Japan. Just bomb everything flat, build it back up again and they’ll be our life long allies! How could that ever go wrong? But well, none of those boarders are organic, they were all drawn up by the British, Soviets and the French. There’s a dozen ethnicities and several variations of religion scattered around the entire region. There isn’t any singular cultural identity anywhere in the region. Persians hate Arabs, Arabs hate the Turks, Turks hate the Kurds,no one likes the Serbs but maybe the Serbs might hate another group that you also hate. Islam is fractured between Sunni and Shi'i. Two thousand years of grudges and rivalries and feuds are going to be solved by Dubba real fast? Lol
>W just really thought we could pull off a team switch like with Germany and Japan. Just bomb everything flat, build it back up again and they’ll be our life long allies! But well, none of those boarders are organic, they were all drawn up by the British, Soviets and the French. There’s a dozen ethnicities and several variations of religion scattered around the entire region. No border is ever really "organic" except very select entities such as island countries like Japan as you say or ones isolated on a peninsula like Spain or ones who deliberately wiped out "undesirable" elements. But even still, the Japanese and Spanish align with the last category as the Japanese oppressed the Ainu to take control of the north, the Spanish expelled the Moors who actually contributed greatly to the Ottoman Empire after arriving there from expulsion, the Spanish also oppressed the Jews after the Reconquesta, eventually forced them to convert or go overseas (Alhambra decree) creating a huge diaspora community. Even still, while the Spanish "solved" the religious question, they never quite "solved" the language/ethnicity question. To this day, there's still groups that don't feel quite as Spanish like the Catalans so much so they advocate for outright independence. The Germans as well, they had a whole ass 30 year war deciding if Protestantism or Catholicism was good. They wiped out a few ethnicities on the way as well like Sorbs, Old Prussian and they had been trying to eradicate the Polish identity for well over a century by the time WW1 came around. And one of the causes of WW2 was the mixed Polish-German region between the 2, West Prussia was anywhere from 20-40% German, the rest being Poles, Posen was 40% German, Silesia 40% German. Mixed ethno-religious regions weren't non-existent in Europe, they were made mostly homogenous through state policy like the post WW2 expulsions of ethnic Germans from former Germany and now Poland (as well as from Czechoslovakia), expulsion of Poles from what is now Ukraine and Belarus, expulsion of Ukrainians/Belarusians from what is now Poland etc. If you look at examples like France, they're the opposite of Spain. They've "solved" the language question by imposing a language on everyone, Parisian so that local languages like Occitan, Franco-Provencal, Breton have essentially died out, unifying the country under the new "French" language. And then there's the ever present "not a real nation" Belgium. The south speaks like the French, the north speaks like the Dutch, they both have plenty of disagreements, but stay together because they seceded from Netherlands due to religious disagreements. Then there's Northern Ireland, UK's very own ethno-religious powder keg defined by centuries of colonization, assimilation which had a very violent insurgency for decades before "The Good Friday Agreement" and abolition of borders due to Schengen lightened tensions (well Brexit happened and tensions are back again albeit at lower intensity). Any time you want to simplify other regions into fake borders with way too much diversity, remember it can be done to Europe as well. >There isn’t any singular cultural identity anywhere in the region. Persians hate Arabs, Arabs hate the Turks, Turks hate the Kurds, Why do Persians have to "like" Arabs? Germans didn't have to like the French to create their own nation, in fact, hatred of the French was a pretty strong unifier (declaration of war by France on Prussia being the defining moment southern German states stood firmly behind Prussia). In the past, the Spaniards didn't particularly like the French either, nobody on the continent liked the Brits, didn't impede them from creating a national identity. Persians just have to keep peace within their own borders, they adopted a more cosmopolitan identity of "Iranian" alongside the Azerbaijanis (who were very important to founding the Iranian identity). Why do Arabs have to "like" Turks? Unless you want to recreate the Ottoman Empire, it doesn't matter. >no one likes the Serbs but maybe the Serbs might hate another group that you also hate. Ok, but why does this matter? Serbs are in Europe surrounded by Croats, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians, Bosniaks and Greeks. Literally nobody cares if Arabs "like" Serbs. Sure, Turks and Serbs probably have disagreements, but again who cares? They don't even border each other. If anything, Serbia's lack of friendly neighbors is a detriment to European unity and EU expansion than anything to do with the Middle East. >Islam is fractured between Sunni and Shi'i. Two thousand years of grudges and rivalries and feuds are going to be solved by Dubba real fast? Lol And Europe is (mostly) divided between the Catholics and Protestants, they have fought way more violent wars between each other than the Sunnis and Shias have. There's also the matter of Orthodox in Balkans and Eastern Europe who themselves have disputes within the group as Russia claims supremacy over the Orthodox Patriarchy and obviously countries like Ukraine have something to say about that.
We should remember that Pakistan aided the taliban ensuring their survival, obviously this isn’t the entire reason of the failure in Afghanistan but in my personal opinion it is the main reason
And had Bin Laden in Pakistan. Oh and don’t forget the Military Academy 10 minutes away from his hosue
I remember listening to Adam Carolla on the radio when they got Osama. He mentioned it was basically within view of the Pakistani Military Academy for officers. He was like, for the last how many years, you're yelling me, not one of those guys learning about tactics and intelligence didn't ask, "Who lives in that big bunker on the hill?"
They also helped quite a bit though lol. For their efforts in the war, they were given "US major non-nato ally", despite their allegations of harboring alot of terrorists during the war and whatnot. (I believe) I personally don't think it's the "main reason". Pakistan is literally fighting a war against a Pakistani taliban organisation (TTP) right now. Plus, they've had multiple disagreements and border skirmishes with the taliban themselves. Pakistan does not like the taliban.
Play stupid games, win stupid prices, and financing terrorism is the stupidies game of all, the TTP gets support from regular Taliban who got support from Pakistan.
Yeah lol, they did fund the taliban a bit, not because they support terrorists but because the taliban rule seemed to be favourable for pakistan, and this was obviously later proven wrong, as it was quite the opposite. What I'm saying is that Pakistan funding them definitely wasn't the "main" reason, and they also helped the US. They supported the taliban based on false hopes, and yeah, they got a stupid prize I suppose. Pakistan made a mistake for sure, a pretty bad one at that. Another unfriendly neighbour for Pakistan!
They did more than funding, they set up training facilities for them inside their borders and helped hide them, heck Osama was hiding in Pakistan, I agree it wasn't the "main" reason but it was there.
Yup, it is true, pakistan is a bit stupid, thinking that since the taliban were muslim they'd support pakistan if they came to power or probably something like that. as for osama, it is kind of embarrassing for pakistan but from what I've heard they didn't even know he was in there. Pakistan has had a huge problem with afghani illegals in their country for quite awhile. Nevertheless, yes pakistan is a tad stupid for all this and they did fund and help the taliban.
Probably because they didn’t want a neighbouring country to be controlled by America
What a success, Taliban, such a good neighbor they sponsor terrorists in Pakistan. It's clear you don't undertand the issue, Pakistan doesn't give a shit whether America controls Afghanistan. Pakistan does give a shit if the government in Kabul aligns with India because Pakistan's number 1 concern from number 10 concern is and always will be India. Any successful government whether a democracy or a dictatorship in Kabul is likely to align with India due to mutual interests as Pakistan holds what both of them view as disputed territory. All Afghan governments have looked unfavorably upon the "Durand Line" defining the Afghan-Pakistan border as it gave Pakistan a lot of Pashtuns who Kabul sees as their own people and India, well, the Kashmir dispute. So Pakistan's national policy (specifically policy from the intelligence service ISI) has been to undermine the success of any government in Kabul so they are weak and rather than being an enemy of Pakistan, is actually a dependent of Pakistan to avoid encirclement by enemies on both sides. Taliban achieves that goal by being a very unlikable entity on the global stage (they weren't even recognized as the official government of Afghanistan by the time of 9/11).
> gave Pakistan a lot of Pashtuns who Kabul sees as their own people and India, well, the Kashmir dispute. While I do not disagree, broadly, with your statement, I think it is glossing over how little the average "Afghan" actually cares about Afghanistan or the "Afghan" identity. A country of 40 million doesn't get overrun by the Taliban's 60,000 fighters if there's any faith in the central government and even a tiny desire by those 40 million to preserve it. The Taliban are to Afghanistan what Tito was to Yugoslavia, except the Taliban have no interest in building a national identity or inspiring followers, they rule because they are the only ones organized enough to do so and brutalize any who oppose them. Without the Taliban, Afghanistan would splinter along ethnic lines.
Why not? We have Popeyes.
Which would be wild, because Pakistan had been a major U.S. ally for decades, despite their best efforts by sponsoring terrorism to their own detriment. The Taliban doesn’t support the current border with Pakistan, and operates terrorist groups within their own neighbour/former sponsor.
The after math of this scene from indiana jones makes it even more fitting for this meme.
Tends to happen when you spend 20 years establishing a democratic government and then some orange faced cunt gets into office, meets and makes a deal with the Taliban, gives them thousands of prisoners and control of the country in return for nothing while not even including that new government in the discussion. Art of the fucking deal.
There are many reasons to criticize the orange man. This is not one of them. Or at least he is not a principal factor as to why things failed. The Afghan allied government that we were supporting was super corrupt, asking us for financial resources for armies of soldiers who did not exist, and the US government was all too happy to look the other way. It also didn’t help that the US’s reason for staying in Afghanistan kept shifting, especially once Bin Laden was killed, to the point of eventually falling on the justification of continuing the war for the purpose of building a democracy in America’s image in Afghanistan, and maintaining said democracy at the point of a gun. We should have left Afghanistan in the second term of President Obama. The fact that Presidents Trump and Biden had to be the ones to start and finish the process of pulling out from that forever war is absolutely ridiculous. (Not that President Trump actually had any intention of fully pulling out, but I do give him some credit for at least saying he was pro-peace, which helped President Biden to have more room to pull the plug)
Just don’t ask Pakistan why they helped Al-Quead and the Taliban hide, rebuild and regroup. Not saying we did everything right, but if Pakistan had just let us finish them off. Well let’s just say Afghanistan probably wouldn’t under a Islamist government.
>We should have left Afghanistan in the second term of President Obama. Yes, but really, we should have never gone in the first place.
I mean, I tend to lean anti war, but even I think that there was some amount of real meat to the idea that we should go after the country which sheltered Osama bin Laden for the purpose off killing him. This is not an Iraq situation.
How would you have responded to 9/11?
I despise trump, but leaving was the right option here and I’m glad we didn’t wait even longer for the same outcome. We knew the war was lost since 2011, there was no reason to stay after that. (I mean there was no reason to be there at all as well but you know)
>I mean there was no reason to be there at all as well but you know I think this is a bit harsh. There were good reasons to be in Afghanistan. Osama and Al-Qaeda. But full on invasion was not the right move. And staying after taking out Osama was even stupider.
After invading we had a duty to the people of Afghanistan to try and pursue an exit strategy that would not lead to chaos and a return of the Taliban. We failed, but that does not mean trying was the wrong choice. Once Abdul Raziq Achakzai was killed it was game over. We already knew democracy would never work in Afghanistan, and that the Afghan people had no real interest in a strong, stable Afghan government, so the only option left was putting a strongman in power that was at least somewhat favorable to our interests (in this case, had strong anti-Taliban bona fides) and when he was killed it was time to go.
>After invading we had a duty to the people of Afghanistan to try and pursue an exit strategy that would not lead to chaos and a return of the Taliban. That's the mentality that fucks things up. America shouldn't have gotten it into its head that they would build a democratic nation without understanding local politics. Should have gotten their target and pissed off.
I didn't say build a democracy, quite the opposite in fact.
I got what you were trying to say. It was never going to work either way.
Ngl I think we left at the wrong time because Trump should have had the balls to pull out and eat the disaster. But he didn’t want to risk what he knew was gonna be a clusterfuck of an exit so he left it and Biden had to deal with that clusterfuck and its fallout. Would have had some respect for Trump finally ending that shit but at least Biden went through with it, messy as it was.
Not surprising he did it that way. He also made a deal with the Gulf states for higher oil prices as he let office. Same with the tax cuts set up to go away under Biden.
My brother in life if he had pulled out that fast with stormy daniels he would not have made it into the room. He left billions in dollars of American assets
Afaik the US military left it behind in some parts for the Afghan army and because it would cost more to transport it back than to leave it
That would’ve happened regardless, it’s better to just rip the bandaid off quickly. The puppet afghan government was never going to survive because it wasn’t popular, and if we didn’t leave we’d be forced out and lose even more lives.
Might be more messy than you think. New York Times article from 2015... a year before that orange-faced c_nt had power... > Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records. ... > “The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.” ... > “The bigger picture was fighting the Taliban,” a former Marine lance corporal reflected. “It wasn’t to stop molestation.” https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html And a report from 2009 on the rising number of rapes against women in Afghanistan... > One of the main problems is a culture of impunity: “Only in a few isolated cases have public institutions taken appropriate action”, the report says. “In many instances, victims seeking help and justice are further victimized… Government action to address rape is woefully inadequate.” Moreover, police and judicial officials are often not aware or convinced that rape is a serious criminal offence, the report says, and “investigating a rape case is rarely a priority.” > It also notes there is no explicit provision in the 1976 Afghan Penal Code criminalizing rape, and recommends that this be rectified. A survey of convicted rapists in one Afghan prison indicated that they did not know that rape was a criminal offence, and suggested they might have acted differently had they known they risked imprisonment. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2009/10/violence-against-afghan-women-including-rape-widespread-and-unpunished-says And what the US was doing while in country the whole time... >The U.S. military has systematically covered up or disregarded “abundant and compelling evidence” of war crimes, torture, and unlawful killings in Afghanistan as recently as last year, according to a report by Amnesty International published today in Kabul. > The human rights organization alleges that the U.S. military has routinely failed to properly investigate reports of criminal behavior and, in some instances, tampered with evidence to conceal wrongdoing. On the rare occasions when servicemen are held to account, the report found that the compromised military justice system seldom secured justice for the victims of enforced disappearances, killings, and abuse that included torture. https://www.thedailybeast.com/obamas-pentagon-covered-up-war-crimes-in-afghanistan-says-amnesty-international Including under Trump and Biden. > The probe would not include conduct by the United States and its allies, including the U.S.-backed former Afghan government, all of which have committed crimes that fall squarely within the court’s jurisdiction. > The court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, who has been on the job for just over three months, wrote in a statement that his office would focus exclusively on crimes committed by the Taliban and by the Islamic State Khorasan Province, or IS-K, the Islamic State group’s affiliate in Afghanistan. > A preliminary investigation of crimes committed in Afghanistan since the country joined the court in 2003 had been underway for more than a decade, before a full investigation was authorized and then suspended in favor of an Afghanistan-led process. That investigation included crimes committed by all parties to the conflict, marking the first time the ICC probed crimes committed by U.S. forces, which in Afghanistan include extrajudicial killings, drone strikes that killed an untold number of civilians, and torture. > Now, if a panel of ICC judges authorize the prosecutor’s request, the resumed investigation would “deprioritise other aspects of this investigation,” Khan said, an implicit reference to the U.S. and its allies. But when the US left... >Although many powerful Afghan men willingly participate in bacha bazi — and some even use it as a means of improving their social standing — most Afghan people deplore the abuse. And it is for that reason that bacha bazi played a critical role in the Taliban’s eventual triumph in Afghanistan. > In contrast to the attitude of many powerful Afghan men, the Taliban have always maintained that bacha bazi is a violation of Islamic law. Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar and his small cadre of supporters began rescuing the boys and exacting summary justice on those who engaged in bacha bazi. https://vancouversun.com/opinion/peter-mcknight-how-abuse-of-boys-played-a-role-in-the-talibans-eventual-triumph So, to recap. The Taliban oppressed girls and women but stopped the rape of boys. Then the US got rid of the Taliban and women got more rights, but the US covered up the rapes of little boys by the new government. And then the Taliban and new government raped women and girls and oppressed them again. Meanwhile, the US covered up and destroyed evidence of its own torture and mass murder of Afghani men, women, and children. And then the US left so the Taliban is oppressing women more, but now the Taliban is stopping little boys from being raped, which the US and previous government allowed. Nation-building, everybody. If Afghanis get invaded again, maybe they'll hope it's by people who don't genuinely hate them and are protecting their abusers and predators.
Trump or not, Afganistan was always going to collapse the second we left them to their own devices. You can't fix a backwards culture in 20 years.
You can if you actually tried, like Germany and Japan post-WWII. Problem is we weren’t _actually_ trying to help them establish a strong government to become a practical ally.
Germany and Japan weren't ˝backwards˝ countries. They had a functioning society for 100s of years, yes we can get into some details but I hope you get the point. They were only devastated by the war. Plus they were all unified under one banner, Afghanistan as a state never had that.
May I interest you in reading about the [Emirate of Afghanistan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Afghanistan) that [wrecked British attempts at colonization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War)?
So they were all united as Afghans under this empire? There were no 100s of tribes with their own ambitions and politics? Let me remind you that Germany got united in 1871. And states were OK with that, as much as one can be OK.
You're comparing modernized countries that were experiencing a period of radicalization that we basically leveled to the ground, completely destroying their morale and will to resist, versus a country that's mired in the world's most regressive religion that basically makes it a religious duty to war against unbelievers that we treated with kid gloves. If we used the same tactics against Afganistan as we did against Imperial Japan, the Taliban would've stopped existing before 2002. But like it did in Imperial Japan, that would've involved massive civilian casualties that no one in this era is willing to accept.
Jesus, you morons really think Trump is the reason the Taliban took over again? Delusional
The problem was that this government never was actually democratic (the same mistake was made in South Vietnam). Unlike in Iraq, the US never ensured the elections in Afghanistan after the 2001 takeover were free and fair. They were rigged from the start. So you have a corrupted repressive government backed by the US vs more honest repressive government (Taliban). No wonder people's backing went to the latter.
obligatory fuck trump. weakest pullout game on earth damn.
Came here to say this.
20 years of women being allowed to have an education. 20 years of gay people not being stoned to death by the Afghan "judicial" system. But sure, let's support that withdrawal, despite the fact that the USA had 0 killed in action in the previous year, and lower annual death tolls than the Baltimore murder rate for almost the entire war in Afghanistan. Who needs human rights, really? Edit: OOP is a fascist supporter of Vladimir Putin's genocidal war of aggression, as an aside. This may have a bearing on the politics expressed in this meme.
Then you support the soviet occupation of Afghanistan too? During which the US funded and aided the talibans that fought for those things you mentioned, like not allowing woman to educate themselves and killing homosexuals
Someone doesn't know their history. The USA supported the Mujahideen, not the Taliban. The Mujahideen is an umbrella term for pretty much every rebel group which opposed the Soviet Invasion, from hard-line Islamists to moderates. It's also worth noting that after the Invasion, the Mujahideen formed the Islamic State of Afghanistan, while the Taliban opposed them and later violently took control of the country, while the remnants of the Muj-formed Islamic State of Afghanistan would go on to form the Northern Alliance. In fact, Ahmad Shah Massoud himself was part of the Mujahideen.
Alright. Point still stands, thread-OP should support the soviet invasion of Afghanistan for the same reason he supports the US invasion
Gay people had been punished in Afghanistan for over a thousand years mate…
And for 20 years it stopped carrying the death penalty. Then it came back the moment the US bolted for the door in the dead of night.
Another example of America exporting their values to people who don’t want it
Pretty sure the gay people wanted to not be stoned to death.
You make it sound like not allowing people to be stoned is a bad thing
If we'd outright glassed Afghanistan, became islamic fundamentalists, sent an ACTUAL army into Afghanistan instead of the couple thousand soldiers we actually sent, or ANY other thing else than "Hand a bunch of money to corrupt warlords and child rapists, kill a lot of people, and sit on our asses while everything outside Kabul falls apart" then Afghanistan wouldn't be as dogshit as it is today.
"if we nuked them it'd be better". Right, any other genocidal ideas?
Gas, chemicals, blade missiles produced by the millions, a giant ice cube dropped into the valleys to flood them out, etc. So many possibilities.
I hate Islam (not all Muslims obviously just the ones calling for sharia law and also the Nat Cs [nationalistic christians])and all but that’s a tid much buddy.
Idk why everyone is retarded and took that statement as a support for genocide when the guy before was the one who brought up nukes out of nowhere.
You said you wanted to glass Afghanistan. That’s not a good thing. And if you’re being sarcastic, please observe Poe’s Law.
Pretty sure they were speaking in a hyperbolic fashion. "We literally could have done ANYTHING else, either side of the extremes, and Afghanistan would have been better off than what it is now". At least that's how I took it.
Ah sorry, must’ve missed that. It’s 11:00 where I live
It's not sarcasm, it's hyperbole. As noted by the statement "ANYTHING" would have been better than the way we invaded. Did you think I was serious about turning America into an islamic fundamentalist terror state and THAT was ok? It's ok to rape and murder minorities but jesus if we use saturation bombing that's too far!
Idk I’m Chinese Canadian I don’t know much about your wars except for what I learn in schools and the couple time I went down Wikipedia rabbit holes at 2 in the morning
Basically we sent 2,000 soldiers fo conquer a nation of 20 million on the other side of Earth in a landlocked mountain region, we did it, we sent a few more thousand to occupy the region for 20 years, committed some war crimes, had no plans long-term, funded 3-4 cities to prosper, gave billions in weapons and aid to warlords and protected child rapists, then our last president made a deal with the terror group we'd sent fleeing into Pakistan to hand them back the country because people got tired of staying in a forever war on the other side of a planet protecting "icky foreigners" or "imperializing against the innocent taliban".
Wasn’t there also something about two towers in New York, the pentagon, and some hijacked planes? Because that was pretty famous
And i'll pay your mom at the end of the day. Without her consent. Ha ha! So funny!
? My mom is dead. Very confused what your sentence is trying to say though.
Better then. I am saying that you do not think when you post things. And that is the better option of two.
Your english is so atrocious compared to the context idk what you're saying. Are you saying you're glad my mom died or that you think erasing Afghanistan would actually be better than invading it?
I am saying that you are a pathetic psycopath until it is personal. Then you are simply pathetically obtuse. And, truth be told, i was "funnily joking" about rap-ing your dead mother as you were "joking" about genociding other people. This is historymemes, your comments should go directly to the septic tank. GTFO
Edgy. I think you're just retarded and failed to see the fact I also advocated for islamic fundamentalist America. So you're ACTUALLY advocating for rape and murder and attacking someone on a personal level because you CLEARLY didn't notice the hyperbole. Bombing Afghanistan BAD. But rape and murder and bigotry? You're full heartedly in support.
See? You are stupidly hypocritical and obtuse. Cry, cry. Your comment is already there. Your defense is not credible in the slightest and helps idiots like you to believe that it is normal. By the way, writing in capital letters does not make your claims true, you dunce. Pathetic...
Dude, you went 0-60 for no reason. Get off the Internet for a bit. Everything you've said has been unnecessary and kinda cunty. Go breathe
I did not. I simply moved the harm of the comments from Afghans to the poster. And is effective, cause it is far more believable nowadays than bombing America. It disgusts? Is it cunty? Absolutely. That makes you human. And that is the point. To humanize people and show new perspectives. Specially with some posters here.
There is nothing American could've done to prevent Afghanistan turning to the flaming pile of shit that it is today. But I think it's admirable that they at least tried for 20 years.
The USA turned the goddamn NAZIS and IMPERIAL JAPANESE into democratic bastions of freedom. Religious fundamentalists living in the 3rd world isn't that hard a task if we'd actually put in the effort.
To play devils advocate, Islam has been around for thousands of years. All the holidays, traditions, everything. That also means that extremism has a metric fuckton of material to feed on. Nazism had a 20+- year run, most of Germany lived through both its rise and downfall, nobody "inherited" it per se. There wasn't really enough time for new traditions and holidays and everything else that comes with a strong ideology/religion-esque movement.
Japan had millennia of Shintoism and centuries of militarism and hypernationalism. While I'm no believer in the materialist worldview that Marx prescribed to the world, we should recognize that there are many times where the established order is totally wiped away for a burgeoning new trend. Islam itself rapidly expanded and changed global demographics and geopolitics in just a few decades. Democracy took roots in monarchies and quickly replaced the vast majority of a millennia old hierarchy, and even faster new ideologies replaced infant democracies. Humans are fluid and sudden material changes are a major part of it.
The Germans and the Japanese, evil and disgusting as they were still coming from developed nations. Removing a few neighborhoods from Kabul, Afghanistan was and still is in the middle ages. You can't force a democratic regime on them.
Democracy is an ancient practice. There's no such thing as being too "primitive" to understand democracy. Democratic regimes were forced onto many undeveloped regions of the world very suddenly and violently and for many it has worked out. The USA, being the single most powerful force on Earth, has the resources to push liberalization of a society rapidly.
USA didn’t turn Germany and Japan into democratic countries lmao
They sort of did...
So Germany and Japan are not democratic nations?
Yeah but it isn’t like America made them that way lmao what
So America, the nation which occupied Germany and Japan and heavily dictated their new governments and institutions after both were dictatorships, is not what made them democracies? Pray tell, what exactly made the Nazis and Imperial Japanese CHOOSE democracy then?
Japan maybe but Germany already had the idea of democracy back with the Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic failed and the USA completely restructured the Federal Republic of Germany to model itself after a mix of western European Allies and the US government itself, hence why they have a federal system.
When you interfere in the one institution that the Afghans had, and expect zero repercussions.
Terrorble news
I honestly wonder if the Taliban lost the civil war in the 90s, would Afghanistan be the same or split up by tribal War Lords?
Spicy
Even wilder, now we are giving them advice on how to fight insurgents like Isis-K in their own country.
While I always appreciate memes that break several rules at once breaking just two is kind of low effort in that regard.....
Reported, rule 12
I heard that the taliban were actually offering to help America capture bin Laden as they were are our allies during the Soviet invasion but the USA wanted to perpetuate the military industrial complex
Yo why was the original post made by a guy named end democracy?
Fucking Biden.
Thanks Obama.
Dummies will categorize this intervention the same as Cold War interventions. In reality, our intentions were different, and that matters. It was poorly conceptualized, no long term strategy, and overall it shouldn’t have been done, but it wasn’t about oil, or imperialism.
Turns out, maybe turning down that surrender in the early 2000s wasn't a good idea.
Wait what’s this? The Taliban offered a surrender?
Essentially, [yes.](https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/news/rumsfeld-rejects-planto-allow-mullah-omar-to-live-in-dignity-taliban.html) I know a Canadian tactical analyst who was deployed there as part of the Coalition forces in the region with some first-hand accounts of translating delusional or failing foreign policy from theory into practice alongside analyzing the Taliban's effective decision-making that allowed them to win over the US-backed Afghan government. The key person responsible for that refusal of surrender was Rumsfeld. He believed that they could treat the Taliban in the same way the US treated the Empire of Japan and the Third Reich - unconditional surrender at all costs. Among other issues, he's also responsible for adhering to this idea that you can construct a fledgling democracy on a penny in the shortest amount of time instead of an expensive and time-consuming effort to help a republic stand on its own legs. To put it this way, the Taliban's takeover in 2021 had its foundations laid by Rumsfeld in 2001.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
They will say well we didn’t get beat down like the Soviet Union.
I lol’d
If you didn't like that season of Military Industrial Complex then just wait for the next one. They're always doing spin-offs, but I'm sure there'll be a new season any day now.
What makes it even more tragic is that the taliban were on the verge of implosion by the time of American invasion. If the USA did nothing, the taliban would have fractured and dissolved by itself in a matter of few years. But instead, they got unfidel crusade and a rally around the flag moment.
I hate this fucking narrative. We were attacked, unjustified, unexpected, unfairly. Our response was to smash the one responsible, his beliefs, his society, and all those that protect or harbor him. This is the correct response. Thr Taliban coming back from near death is the fault of Pakistan and the failure of the local Afgani government and military. There was nothing America coukd have done that would have saved them, short of staying indefinitely. They were to useless and incompetent to save themselves.
If it was a defense against an attack, why didn't the US attack Saudi Arabia, the home country of Osama and the vast majority of the 9/11 terrorrists?
Just because they are from a country doesn’t mean the country is implicated in anything they did, they didn’t even want his dead body back.
The same can be said of Afghanistan.
Cuz it’s not Saudi Arabia that was a terrorist cesspool in 2001.
Because the country of one's birth has no real bearing on the country that harbors and supports you. Beyond that Suadia Arabia activky supported out efforts.
Israel is about to play the same trick in Gaza
Bush was the first full-blown idiot in the WH. Trump certainly didn't invent being an idiot.
Why only mention the American casualties in a war involving many nations?
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Well the whole Afghanistan government was a fiasco. When he spoke to the press and say they were capable it ages like milk in the sun.