He did do some good things, but he failed the test given to him by history same as Biden by not ending the War on Terror after the death of Bin Laden.
In what way did you want him to ‘end’ the ‘War on Terror’, itself an immensely nebulous term for a broad range of foreign policy issues regarding non-state actors?
Perhaps nonintervention against ISIS? Or giving Afghanistan over to the Taliban ten years ahead of time? What form of ‘ending’ the War on Terror are we looking at? What ‘golden opportunity’ did he have?
Obama was an insufficient solution to America’s post-Bush problems. But the urge to counter the hagiography of some liberals about Obama with a broad-spectrum condemnation of the Obama’s administration’s policies is not really a reasonable response.
You replied to me in another comment asking how Obama was a step towards fascism, so consider this a response to that too.
In what way did you want him to ‘end’ the ‘War on Terror’, itself an immensely nebulous term for a broad range of foreign policy issues regarding non-state actors?
Stop fighting and bombing people in the Middle East for the sake of American imperialist ambitions, undo authoritarian post-9/11 legislation (see: ICE), return American society and politics to normalcy and not contribute to the expansion of executive power.
Perhaps nonintervention against ISIS? Or giving Afghanistan over to the Taliban ten years ahead of time?
Anti-ISIS intervention is more complicated, not the least because it started more than two full years after the death of Bin Laden, but Afghanistan? Absolutely, unequivocally yes. Afghanistan was never America’s to “give over” to anyone.
What ‘golden opportunity’ did he have?
Again, the death of Bin Laden. There was absolutely no reason for the war in Afghanistan to turn into an anti-Taliban crusade; he absolutely could and should have said “our job here is done” and left. Not doing so, alongside his expansion of the war on terror into new fronts, protected fascism in America from what should’ve been a leftward swing following Bush’s presidency.
Obama was an insufficient solution to America’s post-Bush problems. But the urge to counter the hagiography of some liberals about Obama with a broad-spectrum condemnation of the Obama’s administration’s policies is not really a reasonable response.
Insufficient is an understatement. American fascism (what will go on to become MAGA) grew through two main vectors: war and economic uncertainty. Obama did basically nothing to address the former and only took halfhearted measures to address the latter. He did some good things, but in the face of what he paved the way for, his accomplishments are about as important as whatever Hindenburg was up to before appointing Hitler as chancellor.
Stop fighting and bombing people in the Middle East for the sake of American imperialist ambitions,
Again, I asked for specifics, not generic descriptions which are passed around between people with a poor understanding of US foreign policy. What ‘fighting and bombing people in the Middle East’ are we talking about, if not ISIS?
You… you do realize that the President doesn’t have the power to do that unilaterally, right?
return American society and politics to normalcy
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??
and not contribute to the expansion of executive power.
This is a legitimate criticism.
Anti-ISIS intervention is more complicated, not the least because it started more than two full years after the death of Bin Laden, but Afghanistan? Absolutely, unequivocally yes. Afghanistan was never America’s to “give over” to anyone.
So with the government of Afghanistan specifically requesting that we not leave and let the country fall to foreign-funded fighters who wanted to impose a brutal authoritarian regime which was promising such delightful things as banning elections, women’s education, and speaking in public, that the US, morally, should have pulled out anyway against the will of Afghanistan because [checks notes] we are Bad Camp and Isolationism is the only route, even for ongoing issues.
As Ukraine is not our’s to ‘give over’ to anyone, should we cut aid to them as well? After all, it would be terrible if we were meddling in things that didn’t involve us again.
Again, the death of Bin Laden. There was absolutely no reason for the war in Afghanistan to turn into an anti-Taliban crusade;
“To turn into”
Bruh, are you being serious?
Do you not remember the Afghanistan War at all?
he absolutely could and should have said “our job here is done” and left.
So your argument is that America has no duty to assist countries after invading them; that after an invasion, the correct response is not to attempt to ensure stability by reinforcing a democratically elected government, but instead hand over all locals who helped or were indifferent to us to reactionary paramilitaries so they can be tortured to death and their families brutalized with them?
For that fucking matter, do you understand the power that the US President has with regards to wars? Executive power makes forcing a war relatively easy, but wars are approved and directed in great detail by legislation from Congress.
Not doing so, alongside his expansion of the war on terror into new fronts,
What new fronts were those, again?
American fascism (what will go on to become MAGA) grew through two main vectors: war and economic uncertainty. Obama did basically nothing to address the former and only took halfhearted measures to address the latter.
Insufficiency in opposition is a far fucking cry from a step towards towards fascism.
He did some good things, but in the face of what he paved the way for, his accomplishments are about as important as whatever Hindenburg was up to before appointing Hitler as chancellor.
That’s a grotesque comparison without merit. If you want to make comparisons to Weimar Germany, Marx or Muller would be more correct.
I don’t give a damn about arguing Obama’s “good things”, as those wouldn’t wash away the bad anyway; my point is that playing the mirror image of liberals who put on nostalgia glasses for Obama is not really a reasonable alternative. My argument is against incorrect condemnations of Obama’s policy on the grounds that the condemnations are incorrect, not that Obama deserves a C instead of an F on his report card, or that Obama did Really Great Work, Honest elsewhere.
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.
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.
In what way did you want him to ‘end’ the ‘War on Terror’, itself an immensely nebulous term for a broad range of foreign policy issues regarding non-state actors?
Perhaps nonintervention against ISIS? Or giving Afghanistan over to the Taliban ten years ahead of time? What form of ‘ending’ the War on Terror are we looking at? What ‘golden opportunity’ did he have?
Obama was an insufficient solution to America’s post-Bush problems. But the urge to counter the hagiography of some liberals about Obama with a broad-spectrum condemnation of the Obama’s administration’s policies is not really a reasonable response.
You replied to me in another comment asking how Obama was a step towards fascism, so consider this a response to that too.
Stop fighting and bombing people in the Middle East for the sake of American imperialist ambitions, undo authoritarian post-9/11 legislation (see: ICE), return American society and politics to normalcy and not contribute to the expansion of executive power.
Anti-ISIS intervention is more complicated, not the least because it started more than two full years after the death of Bin Laden, but Afghanistan? Absolutely, unequivocally yes. Afghanistan was never America’s to “give over” to anyone.
Again, the death of Bin Laden. There was absolutely no reason for the war in Afghanistan to turn into an anti-Taliban crusade; he absolutely could and should have said “our job here is done” and left. Not doing so, alongside his expansion of the war on terror into new fronts, protected fascism in America from what should’ve been a leftward swing following Bush’s presidency.
Insufficient is an understatement. American fascism (what will go on to become MAGA) grew through two main vectors: war and economic uncertainty. Obama did basically nothing to address the former and only took halfhearted measures to address the latter. He did some good things, but in the face of what he paved the way for, his accomplishments are about as important as whatever Hindenburg was up to before appointing Hitler as chancellor.
Again, I asked for specifics, not generic descriptions which are passed around between people with a poor understanding of US foreign policy. What ‘fighting and bombing people in the Middle East’ are we talking about, if not ISIS?
You… you do realize that the President doesn’t have the power to do that unilaterally, right?
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??
This is a legitimate criticism.
So with the government of Afghanistan specifically requesting that we not leave and let the country fall to foreign-funded fighters who wanted to impose a brutal authoritarian regime which was promising such delightful things as banning elections, women’s education, and speaking in public, that the US, morally, should have pulled out anyway against the will of Afghanistan because [checks notes] we are Bad Camp and Isolationism is the only route, even for ongoing issues.
As Ukraine is not our’s to ‘give over’ to anyone, should we cut aid to them as well? After all, it would be terrible if we were meddling in things that didn’t involve us again.
“To turn into”
Bruh, are you being serious?
Do you not remember the Afghanistan War at all?
So your argument is that America has no duty to assist countries after invading them; that after an invasion, the correct response is not to attempt to ensure stability by reinforcing a democratically elected government, but instead hand over all locals who helped or were indifferent to us to reactionary paramilitaries so they can be tortured to death and their families brutalized with them?
For that fucking matter, do you understand the power that the US President has with regards to wars? Executive power makes forcing a war relatively easy, but wars are approved and directed in great detail by legislation from Congress.
What new fronts were those, again?
Insufficiency in opposition is a far fucking cry from a step towards towards fascism.
That’s a grotesque comparison without merit. If you want to make comparisons to Weimar Germany, Marx or Muller would be more correct.
I don’t give a damn about arguing Obama’s “good things”, as those wouldn’t wash away the bad anyway; my point is that playing the mirror image of liberals who put on nostalgia glasses for Obama is not really a reasonable alternative. My argument is against incorrect condemnations of Obama’s policy on the grounds that the condemnations are incorrect, not that Obama deserves a C instead of an F on his report card, or that Obama did Really Great Work, Honest elsewhere.
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.
“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’.