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RE: US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan
March 2, 2020 at 6:04 pm
The Taliban is back to shooting already.
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RE: US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan
March 2, 2020 at 6:06 pm
What drew the Americans to Afghanistan was the Russian interest. They've been trying to push into Afghanistan for 2 centuries so it obviously isn't any Uranium that draws them.
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RE: US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan
March 2, 2020 at 10:19 pm
(This post was last modified: March 2, 2020 at 10:24 pm by Rev. Rye.)
(March 2, 2020 at 3:37 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Is that what you find alarming about the taliban? Not the common drug cartel and extortion racket shit? Civilian casualties of roadside bombs not ringing any alarm bells?
Yeah, the US alternately funding rebel groups only to turn on them later is kinda Standard Operating Procedure for the US by this point. Also, all that cartel/extortion/car bombing shit does tend to be SOP for any sufficiently well-financed organised crime organization.
Even if Bill Hicks is confusing Jack Palance in Shane with Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.
Honestly, I'd be more concerned about the blatant human rights violations under the Taliban, the kind that have even been going down even after we kicked the Taliban government out of Afghanistan (see Malala for more information.) There's a moral reason the US has tried to take them out, and also a depressingly simple reason that said efforts have been doomed to failure, and I talked about it a couple pages ago in this very thread.
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RE: US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan
March 3, 2020 at 12:13 am
Sure, human rights abuses are an issue, but probably not to a person who miscasts the taliban as a group of islamic davids to the western goliath.
I saw your comments, but I tend not to accept a pessimistic view of inevitable outcomes. If the discussion has moral context and imperative even being doomed to failure doesn't resolve the responsibility to make effort.
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RE: US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan
March 3, 2020 at 12:43 am
(This post was last modified: March 3, 2020 at 12:49 am by WinterHold.)
(March 2, 2020 at 10:19 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: (March 2, 2020 at 3:37 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Is that what you find alarming about the taliban? Not the common drug cartel and extortion racket shit? Civilian casualties of roadside bombs not ringing any alarm bells?
Yeah, the US alternately funding rebel groups only to turn on them later is kinda Standard Operating Procedure for the US by this point. Also, all that cartel/extortion/car bombing shit does tend to be SOP for any sufficiently well-financed organised crime organization.
Even if Bill Hicks is confusing Jack Palance in Shane with Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.
Honestly, I'd be more concerned about the blatant human rights violations under the Taliban, the kind that have even been going down even after we kicked the Taliban government out of Afghanistan (see Malala for more information.) There's a moral reason the US has tried to take them out, and also a depressingly simple reason that said efforts have been doomed to failure, and I talked about it a couple pages ago in this very thread.
The U.S foreign policy doesn't seem to care about human rights; it even became a landmark of its foreign policy. The U.S protected and sponsored some of the worst governments on earth -literally-. And still does BTW -cough cough; MBS-
Instead of focusing on far history to understand the terrible -and disastrous- American interventions worldwide, let's look at a very close event like the emerging of the Taliban themselves:
The above are America's allies. So didn't the U.S "know" how bad they were? or you want to convince me that the CIA is "poor and ignorant"? I mean America can snuff Qasim Sulaimani with drones, arrest Saddam from underground, but poor them Americans don't know who the Taliban are?
A nuclear superpower vs flip-flops..
America is a mighty force, that's what I know. If the Taliban turned from allies into enemies then allies allover again, then I smell bullshit.
And if an enthusiast with the American army tells me that somebody is bad, I smell more bullshit.
And don't get me started on morals; I mean the U.S is the first force in the world to burn children in a massive nuclear holocaust.
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RE: US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan
March 3, 2020 at 1:27 am
(This post was last modified: March 3, 2020 at 1:31 am by Rev. Rye.)
(March 3, 2020 at 12:43 am)WinterHold Wrote: The U.S foreign policy doesn't seem to care about human rights; it even became a landmark of its foreign policy. The U.S protected and sponsored some of the worst governments on earth -literally-. And still does BTW -cough cough; MBS-
Instead of focusing on far history to understand the terrible -and disastrous- American interventions worldwide, let's look at a very close event like the emerging of the Taliban themselves:
The above are America's allies. So didn't the U.S "know" how bad they were? or you want to convince me that the CIA is "poor and ignorant"? I mean America can snuff Qasim Sulaimani with drones, arrest Saddam from underground, but poor them Americans don't know who the Taliban are?
A nuclear superpower vs flip-flops..
America is a mighty force, that's what I know. If the Taliban turned from allies into enemies then allies allover again, then I smell bullshit.
And if an enthusiast with the American army tells me that somebody is bad, I smell more bullshit.
And don't get me started on morals; I mean the U.S is the first force in the world to burn children in a massive nuclear holocaust.
I'm not even going to dispute that. American foreign policy at least from the time they had William Walker installed as president of Nicaragua, has always been more about promoting whatever bullshit interests they have in a country's economy or political situation than any real moral issue. I'm sure their interest in propping up the Muhajadeen in the 70s and 80s was that they were trying to fight the Soviet Union more than any claim that they didn't know how shitty they were. Not much different from when the US overthrew Mossadegh and replaced him with The Shah.
This has pretty much been Standard Operating Procedure for US foreign policy for at least a century and a half.
That said, this does NOT excuse any shitty behaviour or human rights violations on their opponents' side. The biggest force that drove the Nazis to their knees in WW2 was the Soviet Union. Doesn't mean that Stalin wasn't a monster in his own ways. Still responsible for about 20 million deaths, including at least one controlled famine that many consider a genocide (while I don't doubt for a second that Stalin didn't lose a Planck Time of sleep over the deaths of all those 3 million Ukrainians, I doubt that it was all that intentional.) Doesn't mean Hitler was any better.
And about the "First force in the world to burn children in a massive nuclear holocaust" thing: First and only. Still don't think it's a good thing, still don't think it makes the war crimes of the Imperial Japanese Army any better.
Whataboutism is not a good look, Atlas.
I can deal with two sides in a global conflict being disastrously wrong-headed and immoral. Can you?
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RE: US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan
March 3, 2020 at 5:34 am
(March 3, 2020 at 12:43 am)WinterHold Wrote: (March 2, 2020 at 10:19 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: Yeah, the US alternately funding rebel groups only to turn on them later is kinda Standard Operating Procedure for the US by this point. Also, all that cartel/extortion/car bombing shit does tend to be SOP for any sufficiently well-financed organised crime organization.
Even if Bill Hicks is confusing Jack Palance in Shane with Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.
Honestly, I'd be more concerned about the blatant human rights violations under the Taliban, the kind that have even been going down even after we kicked the Taliban government out of Afghanistan (see Malala for more information.) There's a moral reason the US has tried to take them out, and also a depressingly simple reason that said efforts have been doomed to failure, and I talked about it a couple pages ago in this very thread.
The U.S foreign policy doesn't seem to care about human rights; it even became a landmark of its foreign policy. The U.S protected and sponsored some of the worst governments on earth -literally-. And still does BTW -cough cough; MBS-
Instead of focusing on far history to understand the terrible -and disastrous- American interventions worldwide, let's look at a very close event like the emerging of the Taliban themselves:
The above are America's allies. So didn't the U.S "know" how bad they were? or you want to convince me that the CIA is "poor and ignorant"? I mean America can snuff Qasim Sulaimani with drones, arrest Saddam from underground, but poor them Americans don't know who the Taliban are?
A nuclear superpower vs flip-flops..
America is a mighty force, that's what I know. If the Taliban turned from allies into enemies then allies allover again, then I smell bullshit.
And if an enthusiast with the American army tells me that somebody is bad, I smell more bullshit.
And don't get me started on morals; I mean the U.S is the first force in the world to burn children in a massive nuclear holocaust.
What you seem to be missing is that is it perfectly acceptable to paint the Taliban as bad guys without painting the US as good guys (although, gun to my head, I'd sooner live in the US than Afghanistan).
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RE: US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan
March 4, 2020 at 11:44 am
"Only the best people and best deals."
US launches airstrike against Taliban after partial truce crumbles
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/48587...st-taliban
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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RE: US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan
March 4, 2020 at 1:13 pm
(This post was last modified: March 4, 2020 at 1:16 pm by WinterHold.)
(March 4, 2020 at 11:44 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: "Only the best people and best deals."
US launches airstrike against Taliban after partial truce crumbles
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/48587...st-taliban
Which U.S ? the Military Industrial Complex or the Oligarchs ?
Obviously, Trump -with the Oligarchs- wants this deal to happen to win the next elections. So America is two now; one with the truce -the Oligarchs- and the other against it -the Military Industrial Complex
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RE: US and Taliban sign deal to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan
March 8, 2020 at 10:05 pm
Depending on which numbers you want to take as accurate, we've killed anywhere from 500,000 to 1.2 million people in the Middle East and have lost just below about 10 thousand American lives. We've torn that region of the world to shreds for the past 17 years... and for what? I couldn't care less about the fact that we "haven't broken the will" of the Middle East... I don't think that was ever our intention. Our intention was revenge, and potentially oil and heroin, depending on who you ask.
The real question is, what's the point of continuing the fight? Your people are being killed not only by us, but by each other as well. ISIL and other jihadist groups terrorize civilians over there, fighting with the militaries, with the police forces and even with each other. I think the Middle East has enough problems without us being a part of the equation. We've tried to help the people over there for years. And they do not want our help. Soldiers I know told me that the armies over there would listen to the Americans while we were stationed there, then would immediately going back to doing things the old way as soon as Americans left their base.
You can lead a horse to water, as they say.
All in all, I just don't see the point in us continuing to be over there. We've killed far too many people, civilians included, and have accomplished what? Call it defeat, call it whatever you like. Many people in the Middle East seem hellbent on continuing to live in a way that no sane person would call civilized. Pride gets you nowhere in war. And apparently, pride is just too important to many of these people. It's a shame.
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