Political Memes

Did you read the article I linked?

The wiki article on the offensive?

Pakistani support was only one item on a very long list of factors. I’m also very much not convinced that foreign support for the Taliban was more than what the Republic was getting.

... Pakistani support has been integral to the Taliban since it's literal birth. Are you being fucking serious right now?

The much more serious problem was that the Republic was unable to maintain the illusion of legitimacy necessary for a state to survive.

No, the problem was that the republic was unable to maintain an actual military to defend itself. Do you... do you think that US assistance was keeping the civilian functions of the Afghan government operational, that it was imposed like some colonial bureaucracy? The Afghan government fell to a literal military offensive by paramilitaries supported by a neighboring country, not some dissolution of civilian legitimacy.

If you want to condemn me as a Taliban apologist, you first have to confront the very real and ultimately fatal problems confronting the Republic even after 20 years of American money and airstrikes.

The issue of the republic's weaknesses and faults is a very different discussion than "The republic had to fall and the Taliban had to win to free Afghanistan from foreign rule!!!"

Yes, the fatal problem of "The government cannot stand up without foreign support against a military with foreign support" is an issue. Imagine making this same argument with regards to South Korea and North Korea during the 50s.

I'm sure now that the Taliban is in charge, 'any day now' the Afghan people will rise up and heroically throw it off, just like the oppressed people of North Korea have done the same. Because you want to believe that's how things work, of course, and it absolves you of having to confront reality.

And a bunch of independent militias and Taliban defectors,

What the fuck do you think 'independent militias' were doing during the Taliban offensive?

with more speculated to be on the way if those guys can hold on against the Taliban. So no, it is not in fact the same groups of people who defended the republic against the Taliban offensive.

It's been three years. When are these 'speculated' reinforcements coming, again?

It's the same fucking demographics, whether or not you want to confront that fact. I understand that it's inconvenient to the position that the Taliban winning was good over the long run, but the fact of the matter is that the Taliban winning has done nothing but worsen Afghanistan's prospects for digging itself out of foreign domination and oppression. But hey, at least the Taliban is busy selling off the nation's resources in ridiculous concessions at bargain-bin prices to foreign countries - can't get any less foreign-dominated than that!

I never said anything about Imperialist Chains™;

This you?

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.

This you?

Now that Uncle Sam is gone, Afghans have a real shot at getting rid of the Taliban and putting half-decent leadership in charge.

Obviously they were running a much more tolerable operation than the Taliban program

That's funny, because you've spent this entire comment chain talking about how important it was that they HAD to fall for the sake of the nation.

It was a band aid that did nothing to address, and was mutually exclusive to addressing, the wound festering under it.

Yes, as we all know, Taliban occupation of the country is not mutually exclusive to addressing the underlying wound.

At some point Afghanistan was going to have to sink or swim; an eternal status quo was simply not tenable. To repeat, the Taliban takeover wasn’t good, it wasn’t desirable for a Better Future™; it was the unavoidable result of the inevitable US withdrawal, in which case delaying the inevitable hurt many and helped no one.

Yeah, this is exactly the kind of bullshit I've been talking about. That you continually deny upholding this viewpoint and then restate it in slightly different terms is exactly the kind of Taliban apologia I'm talking about.

Fuck off with your whitewashing of Taliban atrocities for campist masturbation along accelerationist lines.