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”
“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”