Afghan Conflict: “We Will Conquer Iran Soon” -Taliban

[North Washington Republic]

Yes, a government that cares about not getting absolutely destroyed by big boys like the PLA or United States. It even respects the sovereignty of nations around it. For all their unpleasant aesthetics and support of sharia, the Taliban at least operate like a legitimate, Westernized government in practice, which is good, because it means they can be reasoned with and negotiated with. After all, what Western country doesn't say x but do y? That's practically a facet of European and American leaders on the daily.

Of course you can't make deals with lunatics like ISIS, but if you can reason and negotiate with the Taliban and you can make a deal with them. Better to discuss something, even the unpalatable and distasteful, than to resort to violence as the first recourse. American tendencies to monolith and silo away very different groups of people ("radical Islamic terrorism" is a great example, considering that homogenizes tons of groups whose ideology varies from Bin Laden's geopolitical focused "stop fucking with the Mideast, losers" to ISIS-style medieval LARPing, and anything in between) into large blobs is a good exercise in cognitive laziness.

If you don't understand who you're fighting how can you possibly hope to beat them?

Afghanistan's lesson is this: When dealing with an unpalatable, distasteful government that is otherwise legitimate and rules over a suzerainty with common support (sure, Afghans aren't going to cheer or anything, but the Taliban are a lot closer to the average rural Afghan's beliefs than some random cubicle bureaucrat in Kabul), you should generally treat them as a government. It's the same lesson it should have learned in Iran, too.

The US should really stop thinking in terms of political aesthetics and more in terms of what actually is happening with who it's talking to. America in 1942 allied with the Soviet Union to beat Hitler's armies, and eventually Imperial Japan. Before then it would have been considered stranger than fiction, given the US was hardly a military power and the British and French were wringing their hands over the USSR potentially invading Iraq, Syria, Iran, or India.

Would the modern United States do that? No, not at all. It would either be bombing the USSR at the same time, or simply refuse to assist it, and quite possibly both. It proved this already, since it couldn't even ally with Marxist-Leninist Ba'athists against ISIS in Syria. Of course, current American political culture heavily disincentivizes long term thinking in favor of firing up the base or whatever. This is self-destructive in the long term since it destroys legitimacy of a government internationally, and radicalizes entire populations, although for America this will likely not do much given it's the locus of the world economy. What it will do is make America bad at keeping countries from being torn apart by civil wars or something, although I guess if America refuses to trade with countries based solely on political aesthetics it might inadvertently isolate itself economically like the UK has been trying to. That's pretty unbelievable though.

Although what you say is not wrong. Im all in favour of the US bombing the hell out of the Taliban. Thats just my belief. Seeing Taliban killing girls and raping. And the fact that they are Muslim. Just continues giving us a bad name. I'd rather have a violent Western country bomb and destroy them rather than have the Western media continue talking about the "violent and barbaric Muslims". Sounds hypocritical? Yes, it probably does.

It’s mostly white leftists and Paleocons that want us to leave Afghanistan. I don’t know the fuck Biden was thinking. Did he actually think the Afghanistan could remain somewhat free and not be overrun by the Taliban?

[North Washington Republic]

Imagine downplaying Taliban atrocities as "unpleasant aesthetics".

Cringe. At least play the pragmatist properly, Gallia.

It’s the old “fuck America” stance.

[Gallia-]

Although what you say is not wrong. Im all in favour of the US bombing the hell out of the Taliban. Thats just my belief.

Well you see when you're dealing with people willing to make a deal, you need to put your feelings in your pocket and look at the cards on the table instead. You would probably be a poor fit for the Taliban-American claims arbitration of 2001 over whether or not Bin Laden should be handed over to an ISI safehouse due to his masterminding 9/11.

Seeing Taliban killing girls and raping.

The Taliban don't kill girls and rape anymore than Pashtuns do the same. Because the Taliban have a lot of Pashtuns in them. It's an Afghan thing really, and a more broadly Central Asian thing, and something folks there will likely always do. The Communists didn't stop rape in its tracks, they kidnapped women off the street to fuck them in dark rooms while the Red Army watched. The US Army didn't stop Pashtun police officers from raping boys, all they did was literally kick the ass of the chief who laughed about it in their faces. Not much different than the 40th Army and their KhAD predecessors at the end of the day.

And the fact that they are Muslim. Just continues giving us a bad name.

Yet you conflate the Taliban with Pashtuns. That little pocket from the Indian subcontinent to about Transcaucasia or so, and a good bit into China (what we might call the "left nut" but really it's just Uighurs), is basically the rape capital of Eurasia. They do it a lot there, to a lot of people. It's not great, but it's just something that has happened. No amount of imposed governance or religion can likely ever stop it.

I'd rather have a violent Western country bomb and destroy them rather than have the Western media continue talking about the "violent and barbaric Muslims".

That wouldn't solve either of those issues, but you do you.

Imagine downplaying Taliban atrocities as "unpleasant aesthetics".

Yes, it's literally aesthetics. If you polled most Pashtun men they would say that the Taliban, while it is not great, but it's better than the Communists, and Kabul in general. Taliban atrocities cannot be separated from American Afghan or Communist Afghan atrocities because the broader issue at hand is that Afghanistan is a somewhat rough place to be a woman in general, and, depending on the era, a little girl or boy.

At least play the pragmatist properly, Gallia.

Sorry, I'm a Marxist-Leninist.

If need be I will fully initiate a capitalistic economic reform plan to jumpstart cereal production as a stepping stone towards a general industrialization and a shift away from agrarian economy to modern industry.

The Taliban more or less hit all the right marks for Afghanistan in its current state of social-economic factors. They are Islamic, which is good, because the broadly Islamic Pashtun rural population will not submit to rule by a secular, atheist government supported by infidel Americans or Soviets. They will take their money, of course, but don't expect them to do any serious work at it, unlike the Taliban who seem to be able to inspire Maoist levels of dedication.

[Kowani]

Canada to accept 20,000 Afghan refugees, prioritizing those primed to be target by the taliban: women's rights leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, religious minorities, LGBT+ Afghans, and the families of already resettled interpreters

[Diahon]

Canada to accept 20,000 Afghan refugees, prioritizing those primed to be target by the taliban: women's rights leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, religious minorities, LGBT+ Afghans, and the families of already resettled interpreters

Again: Where is the United States in all this? Is Biden really gonna do a Trump, only instead of Kurds, it's Afghans?

[Picairn]

Canada to accept 20,000 Afghan refugees, prioritizing those primed to be target by the taliban: women's rights leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, religious minorities, LGBT+ Afghans, and the families of already resettled interpreters

Good, the US needs to step up its game as well.

[Kowani]

Canada to accept 20,000 Afghan refugees, prioritizing those primed to be target by the taliban: women's rights leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, religious minorities, LGBT+ Afghans, and the families of already resettled interpreters

Again: Where is the United States in all this? Is Biden really gonna do a Trump, only instead of Kurds, it's Afghans?

the us has already begun the process of evacuating afghan refugees who worked for the government, though as far as i know, all of those other categories have gotten shafted

[North Washington Republic]

Canada to accept 20,000 Afghan refugees, prioritizing those primed to be target by the taliban: women's rights leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, religious minorities, LGBT+ Afghans, and the families of already resettled interpreters

Again: Where is the United States in all this? Is Biden really gonna do a Trump, only instead of Kurds, it's Afghans?

The Republicans, whom are all of a sudden Paleocons would all screech in unison if we allowed Afghan refugees in, even with “extreme vetting”, even for the ones that helped our troops.

[Gallia-]

It’s mostly white leftists and Paleocons that want us to leave Afghanistan. I don’t know the fuck Biden was thinking. Did he actually think the Afghanistan could remain somewhat free and not be overrun by the Taliban?

Most "paleocons" are currently wringing their hands about it on Twitter.

Anyway, why else did America spend 20 years "building it up" or whatever? If it can't stand on its own now, it's not going to be any better in another 20 years. But this was well known before the invasion of Afghanistan. We only had 30 years of communist rule to look at as an example of what happens when Kabul tries to own the countryside.

Imagine downplaying Taliban atrocities as "unpleasant aesthetics".

Cringe. At least play the pragmatist properly, Gallia.

It’s the old “fuck America” stance.

You forgot the part where I praised America's handling of Pancho Villa and its general political successes in Mexico, in contrast to Afghanistan.

Mexican and general Latin American influences remain a pretty strong suit of the United States today, as it has been able to successfully turn Mexico from "oil field" to "eternally cheap car parts factory" and this will probably become "solar plant factory" or "iPhone factory" in the future once US supply chains get out of Asia. This is in sharp contrast to its Eurasian political game, which is noodly and weak, because it refuses to treat broad swathes of Eurasian cultures and societies as legitimate governments, despite them ticking all the requisite boxes, relatively speaking.

Afghanistan is simply not going to be ruled like a modern Western country (i.e. by imposition of impersonal power structures) because it isn't one. Full stop. All attempts to do so will simply result in a KMT-style situation.

[North Washington Republic]

It’s mostly white leftists and Paleocons that want us to leave Afghanistan. I don’t know the fuck Biden was thinking. Did he actually think the Afghanistan could remain somewhat free and not be overrun by the Taliban?

Why else did America spend 20 years "building it up" or whatever? If it can't stand on its own now, it's not going to be any better in another 20 years.

It’s the old “fuck America” stance.

You forgot the part where I praised America's handling of Pancho Villa and its general political successes in Mexico, in contrast to Afghanistan.

Mexican and general Latin American influences remain a pretty strong suit of the United States today, as it has been able to successfully turn Mexico from "oil field" to "eternally cheap car parts factory" and this will probably become "solar plant factory" or "iPhone factory" in the future once US supply chains get out of Asia. This is in sharp contrast to its Eurasian political game, which is noodly and weak, because it refuses to treat broad swathes of Eurasian cultures and societies as legitimate governments, despite them ticking all the requisite boxes, relatively speaking.

I strongly disagree about with this stance “Well, even if we stayed there 40 years, the Taliban would retake the country.” It takes more than 20 years to build a nation. Afghanistan was on its way to become a relatively free society. We were there to make the people’s lives better than they were under Taliban or soviet control. You can be honest and say you don’t like nation building.

This is a fact. Women and girls in Afghanistan are about to lose nearly all of their rights and personhood. Will you concede that fact?

[Picairn]

Yes, it's literally aesthetics.

LMAO. Killing civilians, raping girls, turning women into slaves, imposing a theocratic regime, etc. are just "aesthetics" to you? Okay.

If you polled most Pashtun men they would say that the Taliban, while it is not great, but it's better than the Communists, and Kabul in general. Taliban atrocities cannot be separated from American Afghan or Communist Afghan atrocities because the broader issue at hand is that Afghanistan is a somewhat rough place to be a woman in general, and, depending on the era, a little girl or boy.

Nihilistic handwaving doesn't make the atrocities any more colorful, you know that?

Sorry, I'm a Marxist-Leninist.

Even worse lol.

The Taliban more or less hit all the right marks for Afghanistan in its current state of social-economic factors. They are Islamic, which is good, because the broadly Islamic Pashtun rural population will not submit to rule by a secular, atheist government supported by infidel Americans or Soviets. They will take their money, of course, but don't expect them to do any serious work at it, unlike the Taliban who seem to be able to inspire Maoist levels of dedication.

The right marks? Women in Afghanistan are literally being oppressed again. Afghanistan is regressing backward.

[North Washington Republic]

Yes, it's literally aesthetics.

LMAO. Killing civilians, raping girls, turning women into slaves, imposing a theocratic regime, etc. are just "aesthetics" to you? Okay.

If you polled most Pashtun men they would say that the Taliban, while it is not great, but it's better than the Communists, and Kabul in general. Taliban atrocities cannot be separated from American Afghan or Communist Afghan atrocities because the broader issue at hand is that Afghanistan is a somewhat rough place to be a woman in general, and, depending on the era, a little girl or boy.

Nihilistic handwaving doesn't make the atrocities any more colorful, you know that?

Sorry, I'm a Marxist-Leninist.

Even worse lol.

The Taliban more or less hit all the right marks for Afghanistan in its current state of social-economic factors. They are Islamic, which is good, because the broadly Islamic Pashtun rural population will not submit to rule by a secular, atheist government supported by infidel Americans or Soviets. They will take their money, of course, but don't expect them to do any serious work at it, unlike the Taliban who seem to be able to inspire Maoist levels of dedication.

The right marks? Women in Afghanistan are literally being oppressed again. Afghanistan is regressing backward.

Gallia- is proving the horseshoe theory again.

[Jeriga]

You want the US to spend another 20 years at war?

A war that mind you, would've ended in 2001 if Cheney and his puppet Bush weren't Cheney and Bush, as the Taliban did surrender.

Do you want another 9/11 or not? Or, if you can give a fuck about them, do you want another generation of Afghans licking the Taliban's boots?

we obviously failed by every measure in Afghanistan to change anyone's minds about the taliban. I'm not sure what difference staying or participating in the war there any way would change anything.

[Picairn]

Given the messy situation of civil wars and ethnic fights in Afghanistan, I think the country would have been better off as a confederation. The Afghan people have more loyalty towards their villages and tribes than the Westphalian concept of a centralized nationstate.

[Saiwania]

I'm sure even the Taliban rank and file have mothers/sisters/wives/etc. who they listen to on some level. The fact is plenty of women in Afghanistan agree to the more traditional or primitive rules for them if they were raised in that environment. It is not for the US or anyone else to try to impose a more liberal culture that'd benefit women in Afghanistan. That shouldn't be why the US military was ever there. It is much hand wringing.

If women in Afghanistan can't get higher education anymore if Taliban takes over, so be it. They'll fully adapt or gradually push the Taliban's Islamic jurisprudence to gradually allow for more to be permitted over time, even if it takes forever or if it just never happens.

[North Washington Republic]

Given the messy situation of civil wars and ethnic fights in Afghanistan, I think the country would have been better off as a confederation. The Afghan people have more loyalty towards their villages and tribes than the Westphalian concept of a centralized nationstate.

Similar to Biden’s plan for Iraq in 2008. He wanted to carve up the country into sections based on sect/culture. I have NO IDEA why he wanted to just pull out this hastily when it came to Afghanistan. Who in the fuck is advising him on foreign policy? Tulsi Gabbard?

[North Washington Republic]

I'm sure even the Taliban rank and file have mothers/sisters/wives/etc. who they listen to on some level. The fact is plenty of women in Afghanistan agree to the more traditional or primitive rules for them if they were raised in that environment. It is not for the US or anyone else to try to impose a more liberal culture that'd benefit women in Afghanistan. That shouldn't be why the US military was ever there. It is much hand wringing.

If women in Afghanistan can't get higher education anymore if Taliban takes over, so be it. They'll fully adapt or gradually push the Taliban's Islamic jurisprudence to gradually allow for more to be permitted over time, even if it takes forever or if it just never happens.

We know you don’t give two shits about brown people, Sai.

[Saiwania]

We know you don’t give two shits about brown people, Sai.

The larger point is still true, if all women in Afghanistan were opposed enough, there is no way the Taliban could keep them in subjugation indefinitely. Too many men would sympathize with women's rights over long term. If isn't as if women voting came about for no reason in the US or other places in the 19th century. Even in the most patriarchal of societies, women wield major influence behind the scenes more often than not, and men are easy to sway when women truly punish men or exert pressures over time.

Its major leverage to be the only ones that can truly do the cooking/cleaning/domestic chores better, beyond providing childcare and running households while the men are away.

[Picairn]

Given the messy situation of civil wars and ethnic fights in Afghanistan, I think the country would have been better off as a confederation. The Afghan people have more loyalty towards their villages and tribes than the Westphalian concept of a centralized nationstate.

Similar to Biden’s plan for Iraq in 2008. He wanted to carve up the country into sections based on sect/culture. I have NO IDEA why he wanted to just pull out this hastily when it came to Afghanistan. Who in the fuck is advising him on foreign policy? Tulsi Gabbard?

I don't think dividing Iraq into three different sections for separate ethnic groups is a good idea. It may exacerbate ethnic infighting and destroy a multi-cultural country very quickly. The lessons of Austro-Hungary, Yugoslavia, and the partition of India more than proved enough. I'm thinking along the lines of allowing local village elders to be more autonomous in decision-making, while a weaker central government remains in place to enforce security.

[Gallia-]

I strongly disagree about with this stance “Well, even if we stayed there 40 years, the Taliban would retake the country.”

You would be wrong.

It takes more than 20 years to build a nation.

This sentence makes no sense. Plenty of nations were built in a timespan measuring from "zero" to "infinity". There's no set timescale to what time it would take Afghanistan to turn into the United States. It is likely impossible: Afghanistan has no desire to be the United States, and the United States has no desire to make it so.

I'd suggest you read Azar Gat's Nations but I'm not sure you'd like it. It talks about real things. Like proverbs, families, and tribal relations in ancient times leading to modern nations. And how the idea of "nations" in the West is poisoned by deeply Eurocentric and colonialist beliefs. Beliefs like yours.

You may also want to read to Edward Said's Orientalism. Because you're exuding a lot of orientalist belief right now.

You know, those spooky leftists like...an Israeli scholar of political theory who eats lunch with the notorious Martin van Creveld...and some Palestinian-American pianist who is mostly known for inventing Free Palestine. Wow, if these two guys are saying the same thing, maybe there's a point to it or something.

Afghanistan was on its way to become a relatively free society.

A statement of aesthetics. Freedom is probably not huge on Afghans' list of things. They probably want food, being able to sell things at market without getting grifted, maybe cheaper marriages or a few goats and some good land. Could use a solar panel or ten to power the water pump to irrigate the crops. A few tractors would be nice, the last tractors the village got were built in the 1960's in the Soviet Union. "Freedom" is the want of a opulent and luxurious society that has no needs, but is perfectly content to want.

We were there to make the people’s lives better than they were under Taliban or soviet control.

It failed.

You can be honest and say you don’t like nation building.

I'm fine with nation building. I'm just aware that nation building means something more than the United States, in its preciously naive understanding of nations, means far more than "ballots" and "women working in banks".

This is a fact.

No, it's not a fact, it's your interpretation of statements I made, which is wrong, because you never actually bothered to ask me how I feel about the subject. You fail to see what I'm saying and read what you want to read, instead. Take a few deep breaths instead and re-read it again. I never even mentioned half the things you talked about.

Women and girls in Afghanistan are about to lose nearly all of their rights and personhood.

Very likely. And the men in Afghanistan will likely consider this an improvement.

Will you concede that fact?

Yes. I just did. What of it? Why should Western societies be able to decide that their viewpoints are superior? Because they are rich? Then you are an oligarch. Or is because they are morally correct? Then you are an imperialist. Or is it because Afghans are delusional or primitive? Then you are a colonialist. Should the United States shoulder the white man's burden in Afghanistan for centuries? That worked out swimmingly in Africa when the Europeans did it.

I'd prefer simply letting Afghans rule themselves how they want to be ruled, and if the people in charge of Afghanistan, whoever those people are, decide that certain groups and cliques should not be allowed political voice, then that isn't my problem. I'm more concerned with discussing terms and conditions of lithium mining rights in Afghanistan once the Taliban control it, or it reverts to a warlord situation, or whatever.

Yes, it's literally aesthetics.

LMAO. Killing civilians, raping girls, turning women into slaves, imposing a theocratic regime, etc. are just "aesthetics" to you? Okay.

All of these things, with the exception of theocracy, were also done by the Communists. And the British aligned Kingdom. The United States no doubt had good intentions, obviously, which is...admirable, to put it politely. It simply had no way to turn those intentions into reality, and it tried very hard to do so, with a lot of bombs and money and time spent on a fruitless effort.

Of course it's more an issue for Americans because it saps political will from the United States to do genuinely important things like improve infrastructure when every president needs to fight in Afghanistan for 40 years. Better to spend that money building roads in Afghanistan on paving the highway by my house since that's the Federal government's responsibility.

Eventually America gets so ate up with the world's problems it ignores its own I guess.

If you polled most Pashtun men they would say that the Taliban, while it is not great, but it's better than the Communists, and Kabul in general. Taliban atrocities cannot be separated from American Afghan or Communist Afghan atrocities because the broader issue at hand is that Afghanistan is a somewhat rough place to be a woman in general, and, depending on the era, a little girl or boy.

Nihilistic handwaving doesn't make the atrocities any more colorful, you know that?

It's not "nihilistic". It's a fact. You think it not ought to be right for women to be raped and beaten in Afghanistan. This is a admirable and laudable thing to believe. It's not the case in Afghanistan, of course. Women are beaten, raped, and killed every day there. This hasn't changed in 20 years of US occupation. It will not change in another 20 years. It's not really right for a colonizer with a notoriously poor record at colonizing to show up and decide it wants to play Lego, give up halfway, and not even have the common decency to just make the entire colony an extraction engine for pulling rocks out of the ground.

The US is pretty bad at colonizing because it genuinely believes in the white man's burden though. This is demoralizing because teaching people how to think according to a series of immersed cultural values and customs through the barrel of a gun is hard to do. It takes a lot of effort. The most successful case I can think of is the Dutch Empire, which basically just said "do whatever the hell you want as long as you don't kill each other" and "we're gonna build roads and stuff", which managed to net them a grand total of "basically half a small island" begging the United Nations in the '50's to be allowed to be part of the Netherlands so the Javanese wouldn't genocide them or something. But the United States is more like an unironic British Empire.

All told that was something Europeans just told each other because it sounded better than "gold mine number 609".

Sorry, I'm a Marxist-Leninist.

Even worse lol.

Naturally.

The Taliban more or less hit all the right marks for Afghanistan in its current state of social-economic factors. They are Islamic, which is good, because the broadly Islamic Pashtun rural population will not submit to rule by a secular, atheist government supported by infidel Americans or Soviets. They will take their money, of course, but don't expect them to do any serious work at it, unlike the Taliban who seem to be able to inspire Maoist levels of dedication.

The right marks?

Yes, for Afghanistan.

Women in Afghanistan are literally being oppressed again.

They never stopped. Even if Afghanistan's government wasn't collapsing, everyone would still be beating their wives or whatever.

Afghanistan is regressing backward.

Afghan men would disagree.

Hegel taints even dialectical materialism so I'm one to talk, then again Marx and Engels (my ancestors) smile upon me because I've moved beyond Hegelian discourse and strict dialectical materialism into post-Khrushchev Soviet Leninism. Political "progression" does not exist. It is an illusion, as all "progress" is. All politics and forms of government devolve to the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural conditions of the geography being discussed within a given temporal realm. These are specific to the times, geographies, and unique makeups of the cultures, economies, and distinct social-political entities interacting within them. You can analogize but these are imprecise at best, and bad for novel problems, which appear from time to time with no apparent pattern.

Afghanistan is not a novel problem, though.

A more precise answer is that: In the current conditions that define current Afghan sociocultural development, the Taliban are the best fit option for governance of the people. Women's rights, should they ever come to Afghanistan, will not to them from the barrel of a infidel's rifle. It is possible that Islam may become more lenient in the future in its prosecution of adultery, although I'm not some legal expert on ancient religious laws, so I can't say. It's a subject I have no particular interest in as I am card carrying infidel.

Are there better options? Possibly, but the Taliban seem to be the only ones big enough to make a difference that they're swaying entire warlords to turn over.

Is "Western democracy modeled on the northeastern United States" an option at all? Not in the slightest.

I'm sure even the Taliban rank and file have mothers/sisters/wives/etc. who they listen to on some level. The fact is plenty of women in Afghanistan agree to the more traditional or primitive rules for them if they were raised in that environment. It is not for the US or anyone else to try to impose a more liberal culture that'd benefit women in Afghanistan. That shouldn't be why the US military was ever there. It is much hand wringing.

If women in Afghanistan can't get higher education anymore if Taliban takes over, so be it. They'll fully adapt or gradually push the Taliban's Islamic jurisprudence to gradually allow for more to be permitted over time, even if it takes forever or if it just never happens.

We know you don’t give two shits about brown people, Sai.

On the contrary: pontificating to brown people about why they need to accept these things and not forge their own political future is denying them agency. Denying agency to the colonized so that the colonizer can supplant the local culture and customs with his own is the essence of colonialism though. It has rarely worked successfully without massive amounts of violence, though.

If the United States had wanted to genuinely turn Afghanistan into the United States it would have married every GI Joe to an Afghan wife, enslaved or killed fighting age males, and granted a plot of 10 jugera to every soldier. This would likely turn Afghanistan into America within about three generations.

Brutal, classical, and downright Roman. But it works.

I mean, you have to wonder why they call it Romania right? Surely the people there didn't name themselves after Rome (they didn't). Likewise, indigenous Iberians' cultures were essentially liquidated aside from small holdout Celts and Basques hiding in the mountains due to it.

But it didn't do that. It just told brown people if they wanted to be rich like America, they needed to be like America. Then it half assedly attempted to solve their problems until farmers realized they didn't have to listen to some random foreigners giving them advice. They can just buy cheap Chinese solar panels and a water pump and be perfectly fine, so long as the United States doesn't find their cash crop of opium and destroy their nest egg they use to pay down their debts or whatever.

Similar to Biden’s plan for Iraq in 2008. He wanted to carve up the country into sections based on sect/culture. I have NO IDEA why he wanted to just pull out this hastily when it came to Afghanistan. Who in the fuck is advising him on foreign policy? Tulsi Gabbard?

I don't think dividing Iraq into three different sections for separate ethnic groups is a good idea. It may exacerbate ethnic infighting and destroy a multi-cultural country very quickly. The lessons of Austro-Hungary, Yugoslavia, and the partition of India more than proved enough. I'm thinking along the lines of allowing local village elders to be more autonomous in decision-making, while a weaker central government remains in place to enforce security.

Ah yes. To keep Iraq from having a civil war, we must keep it unified on this map, which is the map which is causing an civil war, as opposed to chop it up like the civil war is currently doing, because the civil war is attempting to break the map up into separate states. Yes. This will end the civil war. Not prolong it or anything. Or result in a tenuous and dangerous situation where conflict might erupt were it not for all sides being too weak to bully each other and simply strong enough to stop the other sides from doing anything.

It's simple!

Switzerland works because it divides ethnic groups by clear divisions of borders, which allows for cantons to rule themselves and police their own people.

Everyone else failed because they tried to colonize various ethnic groups and these groups disliked that so they protested by shooting the government until it was dead. Then they made their own borders.

Which one do you think would most likely work?

Iraq or Afghanistan as confederations would work, like Switzerland. Alternatively you could carve them up into separate states. One requires redrawing global maps. The other requires redrawing internal maps. Both require massive amounts of population transfer, although America isn't really a stranger to moving huge boatloads of people into random new villages 500 miles away or anything. None of which fit into the neat little pigeonhole America has wedged itself into over the past few decades.

[Kowani]

Taliban are in Maidan Shahr (the gateway to Kabul), heavy fighting going near the Governor’s compound
they're also attacking the major city of Mazar-e-Sharif, and Urozgan governor Omar Shirzad says that after days of fighting around Tirinkot city, elders of the province have asked him not to fight with the Taliban to avoid destruction of public installations-bringing the Taliban's control to half of Afghanistan's 34 provinces

also, Afghanistan's Former First Vice President, Yunus Qanuni to lead a high level delegation to Islamabad

[Kowani]

Taliban are in Maidan Shahr (the gateway to Kabul), heavy fighting going near the Governor’s compound
they're also attacking the major city of Mazar-e-Sharif, and Urozgan governor Omar Shirzad says that after days of fighting around Tirinkot city, elders of the province have asked him not to fight with the Taliban to avoid destruction of public installations-bringing the Taliban's control to half of Afghanistan's 34 provinces

also, Afghanistan's Former First Vice President, Yunus Qanuni to lead a high level delegation to Islamabad

Maidan Shar (less than 15 km from Kabul by road), capital of Maidan Wardak province, has now surrendered

[Diahon]

Bullshit.

Not getting beat up because it's your doctrinal duty to get beat up for every bloody trifle is progress. Not having to read through the life histories of people who died because a guy thought well of flying planes into buildings is progress. Those are not an illusions. In your zest to equivocate and "make deals", you're giving way to great evils for... for peace in our time?

[Page]

Bullshit.

Not getting beat up because it's your doctrinal duty to get beat up for every bloody trifle is progress. Not having to read through the life histories of people who died because a guy thought well of flying planes into buildings is progress. Those are not an illusions. In your zest to equivocate and "make deals", you're giving way to great evils for... for peace in our time?

There is a parallel universe where the US stayed until 2041 and in that parallel universe there are exactly the same articles about the Taliban capturing Kandahar and what not, identical save for a single character: a 4 instead of a 2, 2041 instead of 2021.

[Diahon]

Bullshit.

Not getting beat up because it's your doctrinal duty to get beat up for every bloody trifle is progress. Not having to read through the life histories of people who died because a guy thought well of flying planes into buildings is progress. Those are not an illusions. In your zest to equivocate and "make deals", you're giving way to great evils for... for peace in our time?

There is a parallel universe where the US stayed until 2041 and in that parallel universe there are exactly the same articles about the Taliban capturing Kandahar and what not, identical save for a single character: a 4 instead of a 2, 2041 instead of 2021.

And in another parallel universe, the Taliban would be fucking dead, al-Qaeda dead, Osama bin Laden dead, and people could finally move on from their enforced primativism, their brutalities, their fuckups... yes, that would've been golden.