To preface, I’m trying to make the argument that Obama continuing (and in some cases expanding) American operations in the Middle East contributed to fascism in America, not trying to pass moral judgement on him, so I’m going to keep my response to morality-based arguments short. Let me know if you want me a longer response to something.
What ‘fighting and bombing people in the Middle East’ are we talking about, if not ISIS?
Well aside from the obvious Afghanistan, you have Libya, Somalia and other places where America is/was conducting so-called counterterrorism operations. If Obama had stopped these conflicts, it’d have been possible to make a decision on fighting ISIS (which America started doing way after the death of Bin Laden) with less war on terror baggage.
You… you do realize that the President doesn’t have the power to do that unilaterally, right?
Half the things I mentioned aren’t strictly within the preview of the president. However, Obama was also the head of the majority party in Congress and came at the head of a hard leftward swing after Bush. He could’ve likely made significant progress on this front if he wanted. At the very least, he had a massive podium from which he could’ve pushed for de-Bushification.
The same American society and politics which was spiraling into chaos over having a dreaded Black man as president? Goodness me, why didn’t Obama just make society and politics normal again??
I think it’s obvious that this is not what I was talking about. Black man as president fever and war fever were separate phenomena, and while there was very little Obama could’ve done about the former short of ceasing to exist (and probably even then), there was a lot he could’ve done about the former, at least on the blue side of the political spectrum.
So with the government of Afghanistan specifically requesting that we not leave…
Making an exception here, though I probably shouldn’t.
The so-caled government of Afghanistan was better described as the American-installed occupation government, and here’s the thing: The people of Afghanistan were never going to accept an occupation government; as long as the American-installed government was fighting on behalf of and the Taliban were fighting against America, there was only one way this was going to end short of straight up American colonial rule. It’s not pretty, but what we’re seeing now is the start of the painful and sometimes bloody process of Afghans forging their own path forward, and within the context of that process the only thing American presence did was make the Taiban that much stronger by giving them very impressive and very real anti-imperial credentials. When the people of Afghanistan get rid of the Taliban, they’ll have done it in spite of, not because of, American interference. Hell, what America turned into its so-called democratic government was the North Afghanistan Alliance, an organic anti-Taliban resistance organization; now 25 years later that doesn’t exist and Taliban rule is unchallenged. Okay rant over, back on topic.
As Ukraine is not our’s to ‘give over’ to anyone, should we cut aid to them as well?
Nowhere does my argument imply that given that America isn’t at war with Russia, probably for the good of everyone involved.
So your argument is that America has no duty to assist countries after invading them…
See the bit on Afghanistan.
Do you not remember the Afghanistan War at all?
Nope. If it was an anti-Taliban crusade from the start, then that was a futile endeavor from the start and never should’ve continued as long as it did and the point stands anyway.
What new fronts were those, again?
Libya and Yemen?
Insufficiency in opposition is a far fucking cry from a step towards towards fascism.
He took the momentum against the factors that were building up fascism in the US (I focused on the war on terror here, but economic and cultural reasons were obviously just as important) and smothered it via his inaction. He was not just insufficient; in the areas that mattered, he did either nothing or basically nothing. My condemnation of his administration is based on the fact that he was fundamentally barking up the wrong tree while intentionally ignoring the right tree, effectively providing cover for the right from the left. He was a step towards fascism in the same away that throwing away your life jacket is a step towards sinking.
That’s a grotesque comparison without merit. If you want to make comparisons to Weimar Germany, Marx or Muller would be more correct.
It’s admittedly a very loose comparison, but he was a political leader whose career (I’m predicting) becomes historically irrelevant due to his failure to stop fascism.
Well aside from the obvious Afghanistan, you have Libya, Somalia and other places where America is/was conducting so-called counterterrorism operations.
Libya was not part of the War on Terror and American involvement was minimal. I guess unless your position is that the UN can go fuck itself.
Somalia you’re looking at minimal involvement at the behest of the Somali government, the UN, AND the African Union, overwhelmingly not until 2015 and 2016. At some point, what you’re arguing for isn’t “Respect national sovereignty” but “National sovereignty does not grant the right to request help from Bad Camp”
If Obama had stopped these conflicts, it’d have been possible to make a decision on fighting ISIS (which America started doing way after the death of Bin Laden) with less war on terror baggage.
Would it? What arguments made here would suddenly disappear if Obama had reduced our involvement in Somalia but fought ISIS anyway? What arguments would even be weakened?
Half the things I mentioned aren’t strictly within the preview of the president. However, Obama was also the head of the majority party in Congress and came at the head of a hard leftward swing after Bush. He could’ve likely made significant progress on this front if he wanted.
That’s not a realistic assessment of US politics in 2009. Not even close. Fuck’s sake, have you seen the Dem party today, wherein not only are the average ghouls more left-amiable than they used to be (damnation by faint praise, mind), but with the Blue Dogs almost entirely massacred and tossed out of the party? You’re saying that Obama, who struggled to pass the landmark legislation he campaigned on, could easily have made ‘significant progress’ on moving the country in some vague leftward direction when his own party was already balking at the very moderate proposals he was making away from right-wing shitheaddery? Not to mention the absolute opposition of the entirety of the GOP, which was unprecedented.
The so-caled government of Afghanistan was better described as the American-installed occupation government
Jesus fucking Christ, what?
The people of Afghanistan were never going to accept an occupation government
Oh, cool, so they haven’t accepted the Taliban, the occupation government of Pakistan, right?
Oh, ‘anti-imperialism’ only counts against Bad Camp?
This utterly blinkered ‘analysis’ on the left is utter dogshit with no respect for the history of Afghanistan or its current society.
as long as the American-installed government was fighting on behalf of and the Taliban were fighting against America, there was only one way this was going to end short of straight up American colonial rule. It’s not pretty, but what we’re seeing now is the start of the painful and sometimes bloody process of Afghans forging their own path forward and within the context of that process the only thing American presence did was make the Taiban that much stronger by giving them very impressive and very real anti-imperial credentials.
What the fuck.
No. We’re fucking done here. I don’t play games with Taliban apologists.
No. We’re fucking done here. I don’t play games with Taliban apologists.
What the fuck? I’m pretty sure I implied that the process of “forging their own path forward” would imply getting rid of the Taliban, and that American interference was bad because it strengthened the Taliban. If that’s Taliban apologia, then I’m Barack Obama. To repeat, fuck the Taliban and fuck the war on terror for helping the Taliban consolidate power. This isn’t rocket science. Now that Uncle Sam is gone, Afghans have a real shot at getting rid of the Taliban and putting half-decent leadership in charge.
What the fuck? I’m pretty sure I implied that the process of “forging their own path forward” would imply getting rid of the Taliban, and that American interference was bad because it strengthened the Taliban. If that’s Taliban apologia, then I’m Barack Obama. To repeat, fuck the Taliban and fuck the war on terror for helping the Taliban consolidate power. This isn’t rocket science.
“The Taliban had to win for the Afghan people to be truly free because of Anti-Imperialism” is campist dogshit of the same fucking variety as apologia for the theocracy of Iran, or, from another ideological standpoint, the ‘Vanguard State’ of the USSR and PRC. Unless what you’re arguing for is some variety of accelerationism, wherein the Taliban taking control of the major levers of power in the country will Invigorate The Heroic Resistance™, in which case it’s slightly less vile, considerably more idiotic, and no less campist in regarding the actual occupation government of the Taliban as preferable to the Dogs Of The Great Satan. It doesn’t fucking matter that you believe that in the long run the Taliban should be cast off if you think its appropriate in the ‘short-term’ of fucking decades of throwing acid on little girls’ faces for receiving an education and banning women’s voices from being heard in public by a totalitarian theocracy puppet state of a foreign intelligence agency without the slightest hint of democratic pretensions and an extensive history of extrajudicial murder in excess of the already-quite-violent situation in pre-2021 Afghanistan.
and that American interference was bad because it strengthened the Taliban
Would you like to fucking remind me what the position of the Taliban was like before ‘American interference’.
Would you like to remind me what the position of the Taliban is now?
The primary difference is that the NRF doesn’t have a figure like the Northern Alliance had in Ahmad Shah Massoud, a figure who could unite disparate personalities (and it is a matter in large part of personalities in coalition building in a country without a strong sense of nationhood (and if you say that Afghanistan does have a strong sense of nationhood, I will unfortunately not be surprised) or broader ideological unity) in resistance to the Taliban. And Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated before the American intervention in the country.
The whole fucking idea that the Taliban came into power because of ‘anti-imperialist’ credentials is a fucking armchair leftist take with no understanding of the history or society of Afghanistan at present, nor, for that matter, of social movements in general or of the practical position of the Taliban itself. The Taliban remained deeply unpopular in most of Afghanistan, and are a continuing contributor to the deep and declining dissatisfaction in Afghanistan today.
The deeper issue is that this is all in-line with your previous positions. This isn’t some fucking fluke, just an especially stark display of how far you’re willing to take your campism. The idea of the Afghan government, which constantly clashed with US interests, as an ‘occupation’ government is especially fucking absurd, but hey, whoever you need to play apologist for in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’ (here, of course, meaning campism, not being against governments which are puppeted by foreign powers or which sell off the natural resources of the nation to imperialist countries with no input from the citizenry of Afghanistan).
This is no different than simping for North Korea under the position that South Korea is an Amerikkkan puppet. “Sure North Korea is bad, but we need to kick out the foreigners, and THEN the People will Rise Up Against Oppression, like they have in the DPRK (they have risen up against oppression, right?)”
Now that Uncle Sam is gone, Afghans have a real shot at getting rid of the Taliban and putting half-decent leadership in charge.
Thank you for affirming, with that edit, everything I saw implied by your previous statements.
So I reiterate - fuck your Taliban apologia, Mr. Obama.
Okay I’m about as interested in continuing this conversation as you are, given that you’re obviously more interesting in unilateral condemnation than understanding, but like you do realize we’re now living in the timeline where Obama didn’t leave Afghanistan right? I mean dude, the US-installed government fell within four months of the US withdrawal. Four months from start to end. The so-called Afghan government was a corrupt mess only propped up by NATO pumping billions of dollars in money, supplies and troops, and as soon as NATO left it started falling apart. We’re talking ghost battalions, preposterous amounts of bribery, billions of dollars in embezzled money. No matter how much you hate the Taliban (which, yeah, we all do), the Islamic Republic simply never provided a credible alternative. I mean what the heck is this? In the immortal words of Joe Biden:
the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped—as well-equipped as any army in the world—and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban.
And they fucking lost anyway. I mean I fucking hate that the group to succeed them had to be the Taliban, but when your government can’t survive three months without support from the most powerful country in the world, well that is a fucking problem. This is even worse than I thought; there was simply no way to keep that house of cards standing, and who was the only group capable of filling the void? That’s right, the Taliban, no thanks to Uncle Sam. And now that you don’t have America giving the Taliban legitimacy with every bombing, drone strike or even their very existence, the people of Afghanistan are organically taking up arms against the Taliban. Wonder how that works.
PS: Not everyone who disagrees with you on topics you’re strongly opinionated about is the devil (or a Taliban apologist, but those are basically the same thing).
PSS: More seriously, you show a serious lack of understanding regarding the attitudes of indigenous peoples towards foreign invaders. A foreign enemy is enough to turn anyone into a hero and anyone (or anything) into a villain.
So I reiterate - fuck your Taliban apologia, Mr. Obama.
I mean I fucking hate that the group to succeed them had to be the Taliban, but when your government can’t survive three months without support from the most powerful country in the world, well that is a fucking problem.
Yes, it is a fucking problem that a government cannot survive without foreign support against a military with foreign support. That does not, however, equate to the idea that the military with foreign support winning is the only fucking way forward.
And now that you don’t have America giving the Taliban legitimacy with every bombing, drone strike or even their very existence, the people of Afghanistan are organically taking up arms against the Taliban. Wonder how that works.
And how’s that gone? And which people are taking up arms?
Oh, what’s that? The same groups of people who defended the republic against the Taliban offensive?
Golly gee, it’s almost like what happened isn’t some new development of a base of support or the energizing of a new, previously passive group to take up arms, but a continuation of the same fucking fight but with vastly reduced resources. Luckily, as we all know, continuing a fight with the same base of support but vastly reduced resources results in the Underdog Bonus™ coming into play, and definitely isn’t a delusion of accelerationist dipshittery that a worse position is a better one, actually.
PS: Not everyone who disagrees with you on topics you’re strongly opinionated about is the devil (or a Taliban apologist, but those are basically the same thing).
And what about people who say, explicitly, that the Taliban taking power is the only way to free Afghanistan of Imperialist Chains™? You know, like you explicitly said?
“It’s not apologia because I don’t like them, I’m just making apologies for why their rise to power was good and necessary!”
No, that’s still apologia, sorry to burst your bubble. You can own up to it or you can lie to yourself, but don’t expect other people to play asspat games with someone who plays apologist for a regime busy banning little girls from learning how to read and mutilating the ones who get too uppity.
PSS: More seriously, you show a serious lack of understanding regarding the attitudes of indigenous peoples towards foreign invaders. A foreign enemy is enough to turn anyone into a hero and anyone (or anything) into a villain.
‘Indigenous peoples’ jesus fucking Christ, this is exactly the kind of narrow pseudoacademic bullshit that gets passed around leftist circles as a universal truth that I was bitching about. Who are the indigenous peoples and who are the foreign invaders, here? Do you know anything about Afghan ethnic groups, or how they regard one another? Do you understand the base of recruitment of the Taliban?
If I showed you data regarding the opinions of Afghans before 2021 on the Taliban and the US, would you change your mind, or would you find a convenient excuse to continue licking the Taliban’s boots as some expression of ‘anti-imperialist’ sentiment (by being a representative of Pakistani imperialism, which is somehow immune to this notion you’re peddling)?
Apparently, what you really mean is “Bad Camp is always the foreign invader, which means other foreign invaders are suddenly Expressions Of The Indigenous Will”
To preface, I’m trying to make the argument that Obama continuing (and in some cases expanding) American operations in the Middle East contributed to fascism in America, not trying to pass moral judgement on him, so I’m going to keep my response to morality-based arguments short. Let me know if you want me a longer response to something.
Well aside from the obvious Afghanistan, you have Libya, Somalia and other places where America is/was conducting so-called counterterrorism operations. If Obama had stopped these conflicts, it’d have been possible to make a decision on fighting ISIS (which America started doing way after the death of Bin Laden) with less war on terror baggage.
Half the things I mentioned aren’t strictly within the preview of the president. However, Obama was also the head of the majority party in Congress and came at the head of a hard leftward swing after Bush. He could’ve likely made significant progress on this front if he wanted. At the very least, he had a massive podium from which he could’ve pushed for de-Bushification.
I think it’s obvious that this is not what I was talking about. Black man as president fever and war fever were separate phenomena, and while there was very little Obama could’ve done about the former short of ceasing to exist (and probably even then), there was a lot he could’ve done about the former, at least on the blue side of the political spectrum.
Making an exception here, though I probably shouldn’t.
The so-caled government of Afghanistan was better described as the American-installed occupation government, and here’s the thing: The people of Afghanistan were never going to accept an occupation government; as long as the American-installed government was fighting on behalf of and the Taliban were fighting against America, there was only one way this was going to end short of straight up American colonial rule. It’s not pretty, but what we’re seeing now is the start of the painful and sometimes bloody process of Afghans forging their own path forward, and within the context of that process the only thing American presence did was make the Taiban that much stronger by giving them very impressive and very real anti-imperial credentials. When the people of Afghanistan get rid of the Taliban, they’ll have done it in spite of, not because of, American interference. Hell, what America turned into its so-called democratic government was the North Afghanistan Alliance, an organic anti-Taliban resistance organization; now 25 years later that doesn’t exist and Taliban rule is unchallenged. Okay rant over, back on topic.
Nowhere does my argument imply that given that America isn’t at war with Russia, probably for the good of everyone involved.
See the bit on Afghanistan.
Nope. If it was an anti-Taliban crusade from the start, then that was a futile endeavor from the start and never should’ve continued as long as it did and the point stands anyway.
Libya and Yemen?
He took the momentum against the factors that were building up fascism in the US (I focused on the war on terror here, but economic and cultural reasons were obviously just as important) and smothered it via his inaction. He was not just insufficient; in the areas that mattered, he did either nothing or basically nothing. My condemnation of his administration is based on the fact that he was fundamentally barking up the wrong tree while intentionally ignoring the right tree, effectively providing cover for the right from the left. He was a step towards fascism in the same away that throwing away your life jacket is a step towards sinking.
It’s admittedly a very loose comparison, but he was a political leader whose career (I’m predicting) becomes historically irrelevant due to his failure to stop fascism.
Libya was not part of the War on Terror and American involvement was minimal. I guess unless your position is that the UN can go fuck itself.
Somalia you’re looking at minimal involvement at the behest of the Somali government, the UN, AND the African Union, overwhelmingly not until 2015 and 2016. At some point, what you’re arguing for isn’t “Respect national sovereignty” but “National sovereignty does not grant the right to request help from Bad Camp”
Would it? What arguments made here would suddenly disappear if Obama had reduced our involvement in Somalia but fought ISIS anyway? What arguments would even be weakened?
That’s not a realistic assessment of US politics in 2009. Not even close. Fuck’s sake, have you seen the Dem party today, wherein not only are the average ghouls more left-amiable than they used to be (damnation by faint praise, mind), but with the Blue Dogs almost entirely massacred and tossed out of the party? You’re saying that Obama, who struggled to pass the landmark legislation he campaigned on, could easily have made ‘significant progress’ on moving the country in some vague leftward direction when his own party was already balking at the very moderate proposals he was making away from right-wing shitheaddery? Not to mention the absolute opposition of the entirety of the GOP, which was unprecedented.
Jesus fucking Christ, what?
Oh, cool, so they haven’t accepted the Taliban, the occupation government of Pakistan, right?
Oh, ‘anti-imperialism’ only counts against Bad Camp?
This utterly blinkered ‘analysis’ on the left is utter dogshit with no respect for the history of Afghanistan or its current society.
What the fuck.
No. We’re fucking done here. I don’t play games with Taliban apologists.
What the fuck? I’m pretty sure I implied that the process of “forging their own path forward” would imply getting rid of the Taliban, and that American interference was bad because it strengthened the Taliban. If that’s Taliban apologia, then I’m Barack Obama. To repeat, fuck the Taliban and fuck the war on terror for helping the Taliban consolidate power. This isn’t rocket science. Now that Uncle Sam is gone, Afghans have a real shot at getting rid of the Taliban and putting half-decent leadership in charge.
“The Taliban had to win for the Afghan people to be truly free because of Anti-Imperialism” is campist dogshit of the same fucking variety as apologia for the theocracy of Iran, or, from another ideological standpoint, the ‘Vanguard State’ of the USSR and PRC. Unless what you’re arguing for is some variety of accelerationism, wherein the Taliban taking control of the major levers of power in the country will Invigorate The Heroic Resistance™, in which case it’s slightly less vile, considerably more idiotic, and no less campist in regarding the actual occupation government of the Taliban as preferable to the Dogs Of The Great Satan. It doesn’t fucking matter that you believe that in the long run the Taliban should be cast off if you think its appropriate in the ‘short-term’ of fucking decades of throwing acid on little girls’ faces for receiving an education and banning women’s voices from being heard in public by a totalitarian theocracy puppet state of a foreign intelligence agency without the slightest hint of democratic pretensions and an extensive history of extrajudicial murder in excess of the already-quite-violent situation in pre-2021 Afghanistan.
Would you like to fucking remind me what the position of the Taliban was like before ‘American interference’.
I’ll give you a little fucking hint - not fucking pretty.
Would you like to remind me what the position of the Taliban is now?
The primary difference is that the NRF doesn’t have a figure like the Northern Alliance had in Ahmad Shah Massoud, a figure who could unite disparate personalities (and it is a matter in large part of personalities in coalition building in a country without a strong sense of nationhood (and if you say that Afghanistan does have a strong sense of nationhood, I will unfortunately not be surprised) or broader ideological unity) in resistance to the Taliban. And Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated before the American intervention in the country.
The whole fucking idea that the Taliban came into power because of ‘anti-imperialist’ credentials is a fucking armchair leftist take with no understanding of the history or society of Afghanistan at present, nor, for that matter, of social movements in general or of the practical position of the Taliban itself. The Taliban remained deeply unpopular in most of Afghanistan, and are a continuing contributor to the deep and declining dissatisfaction in Afghanistan today.
The deeper issue is that this is all in-line with your previous positions. This isn’t some fucking fluke, just an especially stark display of how far you’re willing to take your campism. The idea of the Afghan government, which constantly clashed with US interests, as an ‘occupation’ government is especially fucking absurd, but hey, whoever you need to play apologist for in the name of ‘anti-imperialism’ (here, of course, meaning campism, not being against governments which are puppeted by foreign powers or which sell off the natural resources of the nation to imperialist countries with no input from the citizenry of Afghanistan).
This is no different than simping for North Korea under the position that South Korea is an Amerikkkan puppet. “Sure North Korea is bad, but we need to kick out the foreigners, and THEN the People will Rise Up Against Oppression, like they have in the DPRK (they have risen up against oppression, right?)”
Thank you for affirming, with that edit, everything I saw implied by your previous statements.
So I reiterate - fuck your Taliban apologia, Mr. Obama.
Okay I’m about as interested in continuing this conversation as you are, given that you’re obviously more interesting in unilateral condemnation than understanding, but like you do realize we’re now living in the timeline where Obama didn’t leave Afghanistan right? I mean dude, the US-installed government fell within four months of the US withdrawal. Four months from start to end. The so-called Afghan government was a corrupt mess only propped up by NATO pumping billions of dollars in money, supplies and troops, and as soon as NATO left it started falling apart. We’re talking ghost battalions, preposterous amounts of bribery, billions of dollars in embezzled money. No matter how much you hate the Taliban (which, yeah, we all do), the Islamic Republic simply never provided a credible alternative. I mean what the heck is this? In the immortal words of Joe Biden:
And they fucking lost anyway. I mean I fucking hate that the group to succeed them had to be the Taliban, but when your government can’t survive three months without support from the most powerful country in the world, well that is a fucking problem. This is even worse than I thought; there was simply no way to keep that house of cards standing, and who was the only group capable of filling the void? That’s right, the Taliban, no thanks to Uncle Sam. And now that you don’t have America giving the Taliban legitimacy with every bombing, drone strike or even their very existence, the people of Afghanistan are organically taking up arms against the Taliban. Wonder how that works.
PS: Not everyone who disagrees with you on topics you’re strongly opinionated about is the devil (or a Taliban apologist, but those are basically the same thing).
PSS: More seriously, you show a serious lack of understanding regarding the attitudes of indigenous peoples towards foreign invaders. A foreign enemy is enough to turn anyone into a hero and anyone (or anything) into a villain.
Welp, guess I gotta go war crimin’.
Yes, it is a fucking problem that a government cannot survive without foreign support against a military with foreign support. That does not, however, equate to the idea that the military with foreign support winning is the only fucking way forward.
And how’s that gone? And which people are taking up arms?
Oh, what’s that? The same groups of people who defended the republic against the Taliban offensive?
Golly gee, it’s almost like what happened isn’t some new development of a base of support or the energizing of a new, previously passive group to take up arms, but a continuation of the same fucking fight but with vastly reduced resources. Luckily, as we all know, continuing a fight with the same base of support but vastly reduced resources results in the Underdog Bonus™ coming into play, and definitely isn’t a delusion of accelerationist dipshittery that a worse position is a better one, actually.
And what about people who say, explicitly, that the Taliban taking power is the only way to free Afghanistan of Imperialist Chains™? You know, like you explicitly said?
“It’s not apologia because I don’t like them, I’m just making apologies for why their rise to power was good and necessary!”
No, that’s still apologia, sorry to burst your bubble. You can own up to it or you can lie to yourself, but don’t expect other people to play asspat games with someone who plays apologist for a regime busy banning little girls from learning how to read and mutilating the ones who get too uppity.
‘Indigenous peoples’ jesus fucking Christ, this is exactly the kind of narrow pseudoacademic bullshit that gets passed around leftist circles as a universal truth that I was bitching about. Who are the indigenous peoples and who are the foreign invaders, here? Do you know anything about Afghan ethnic groups, or how they regard one another? Do you understand the base of recruitment of the Taliban?
If I showed you data regarding the opinions of Afghans before 2021 on the Taliban and the US, would you change your mind, or would you find a convenient excuse to continue licking the Taliban’s boots as some expression of ‘anti-imperialist’ sentiment (by being a representative of Pakistani imperialism, which is somehow immune to this notion you’re peddling)?
Apparently, what you really mean is “Bad Camp is always the foreign invader, which means other foreign invaders are suddenly Expressions Of The Indigenous Will”