All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[worstblogever]

I get that the GOP has been looking for anything at all that could "stick" On Biden and the administration so far. But, using Afghanistan is just ridiculous. Sure you could argue that the Biden administration vastly underestimated the plan to evacuate and speed the Taliban took back territory. But, that also is a failure of the entire war there since the start. Everything we did there was wrong, horribly planned, ill executed. He could have ditched Trumps pullout plan and kicked the can down the road another 10 years.

But, that would have changed? They still wouldn't have been self sustaining government capable of holding on against the Taliban. Other than permanent occupation and throwing money in the hole there getting out offering visas, safety for our trusted allies who are now in danger without amnesty etc. what else is there?

Saw a report on MSNBC that part of the problem with the Afghani military was... the leaders hadn't been, y'know... PAYING THEM.

They weren't staying to fight the Taliban and die for free. While their president fled the country with as much cash as he could carry.

[numberthirty]

I never said that they wanted us to liberate them. We were only in the country because they harbored terrorists. And while our actions were far from perfect, we were far better than the Taliban.

The country had twenty years to change for the better, and it didn't happen. Why is it everyone else's fault but theirs?

Isn't this a bit like looking at everything that happens in Mexico, and posing the same question?

[The Cool Thatguy]

Isn't this a bit like looking at everything that happens in Mexico, and posing the same question?

Not really. Mexico is stuck next to us, which is a fine excuse/justification for a lot of crap that goes wrong there.

[numberthirty]

Not really. Mexico is stuck next to us, which is a fine excuse/justification for a lot of crap that goes wrong there.

And, the country you want to justify itself isn't right next door to a country that is a fine excuse/justification for a lot of what is wrong there?

[BeastieRunner]

Saw a report on MSNBC that part of the problem with the Afghani military was... the leaders hadn't been, y'know... PAYING THEM.

They weren't staying to fight the Taliban and die for free. While their president fled the country with as much cash as he could carry.

A look at the alternate timeline in America we just avoided.

Sadly at the cost of innocent Afghanis.

Isn't this a bit like looking at everything that happens in Mexico, and posing the same question?

I ... actually agree.

I never agreed with the war but once you're in, you're there to support agree or not.

We didn't really leave them with a good enough system to protect themselves when we left.

Imagine if we did that same thing in Japan in the 45s-55s (pretty much anytime post WWII and pre Showa coup people being run out by 1955), South Korea pretty much anytime ... something similar probably would've happened.

[kidfresh512]

Saw a report on MSNBC that part of the problem with the Afghani military was... the leaders hadn't been, y'know... PAYING THEM.

They weren't staying to fight the Taliban and die for free. While their president fled the country with as much cash as he could carry.

This kind of corruption happens ALL the time too. When the West is tossing money into a warzone or international corporations are propping up thugs and warlords to get at Oil and natural resources the corruption is rampant. We see it all the time. Some of the most blatant corruption you have ever seen even down to a person basis is these countries where we are in them for natural resources. The first time I had to go to some of these countries in the oil industry and get to offshore assets for projects. It is shocking how blatantly corrupt they are. We need armed escorts to get to assets in certain countries. You can see how poor the populations are, but massive international corporations are there taking their oil and resources. Why are the actual people so poor though? Corruption.

Paying for access, "fees" to government agencies while somehow the actual populace isn't really seeing that cash for some reason.

Same thing with the military industrial complex. All that cash we pour in to support the war the troops the nascent government. Are they spending it correctly? Is it going where we are told its supposed to go? Are we getting what we are supposed to out of it? Our military leaders for decades the policy people that have told us what we are doing there has a point and a purpose have either been lying or so incompetent they didn't know this was never going to end well.

[babyblob]

What I try and tell some of the so called "Common sense GOP supporters" that I know who say I dont support racism and the big lie because I dont support Trump.

Yet they support people like Mitch and Getz, Kevin McCarthy and Lindsey Graham who all supported the big lie at one point. Who blocked the Jan 6th commission and attack Pelosi for starting her own. They dont support Trump yet support the local and state governments who pass Anti Gay and trans Bills and Voter Restriction bills. They are not Anti Vax and Anti mask but support the people who give misinformation and try and fine people or take away paychecks from officials who support mask madidates and require vaccines.

Great they dont support Trump but support all the people who enable him, they support and defend racists and laws that restrict the rights of many people and put many others at risk. Yea they are real moral heroes. Good job people. Im not saying vote 100 percent Dem. That will never happen. But if you truly dont support Trump vote for GOP members who have stood up to him and not the people who day in and day our kiss his and his supporters ass. because if they dont they are back door Trumpers even if they refuse to admit it.

At the end of the day they are talking out of the other side of their ass but want you to thank them for doing it. Get real.

[The Cool Thatguy]

And, the country you want to justify itself isn't right next door to a country that is a fine excuse/justification for a lot of what is wrong there?

We're not funneling guns to cartels or being the world's largest drug market with easy access, with regards to Afghanistan. So no, I don't see them as compatible. Especially when Mexico has a functioning government and democracy, albeit with major corruption issues.

[Mister Mets]

If you stand with the Republican Party right now, you stand with white nationalists. You've given vehement defenses of some of the worst of the party members (Stephen Miller being the prime example, but you've paid some lip service to Matt Gaetz up until he was caught child sex trafficking). You cannot gaslight everyone and pretend it isn't the case that this is what Trump has made your party become. Not when about 23% of your party is polled as admiring white nationalists. Google "Republican Party White Nationalism" and see how many articles come up that no longer even discuss it as a question. It is warranted. Every day.

If you feel it's personal that someone would expect you to give stronger rejections of white nationalists and the white nationalist party you're a part of... That might mean you're not aware you're already getting a toe in that water yourself. No matter how much you try to look in a mirror and tell yourself it's "not merited".

Because, as I've often pointed out, you don't have to defend your party and all its white nationalism reflexively. You can leave it. Which would show a lot more character.

Credit to the two posters that have acknowledged they have today in this thread, and that it was for this very reason.

Let's take a look at what I've said that you believe to be so outrageously wrong that no reasonable person can believe it. Because if this is stuff that is merely wrong, it doesn't make sense to bring it up months or years later. And if it's right, bringing it up is pretty much indefinsible.

One comment about Matt Gaetz from March 30 was a response to your suggestion that it was wrong that Bill Barr was aware of the investigation and said nothing.

I'm not sure you've thought through the complaint that the Trump administration should have said more publicly about an active investigation.

If Gaetz committed the crime, announcing the investigation months before any charges are filed would only help him have more time to prepare for his legal defense. If he's capable of sex trafficking he's probably capable of bribing and intimidating witnesses.

The Barr justice department was sometimes quiet about investigations, even when it would have been politically convenient to leak more.

To this you responded...

Hey, new low. You're making excuses for someone being investigated by the FBI for child sex trafficking because he's a Republican.

Reflexes still sharp, Mets, but making you defend the absolute worst actions of the worst people.

When you don't have to.

I am comfortable with this being a proxy for which of us has a better understanding of politics.

If people think what I said is so outrageously wrong as to merit personal criticism months later, they should trust you.

If they think what I said falls short of that, or that I might even be right, they should trust me more.

For context, at the time, the New York Times had just reported that there was a justice department inquiry.

https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/a...pdate-12098498

As for the Stephen Miller thing, this was in response to a poster expressing the belief that Stephen Miller ordered the Department of Homeland Security to use Nazi dog whistles in a press release.

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post3756455

There are two possibilities here. One is that Stephen Miller did insist on Nazi dog whistles in a Department of Homeland Security press release. The other is that a Jewish man is wrongly accused of Nazi dog whistles.

I still believe that the second possibility is much more likely. I certainly don't think that this is such an outrageously wrong political opinion that it should be brought up years later, but I am willing to have this used as a proxy about which of us is more correct politically.

I do recommend getting a second opinion, and showing my posts to other people to ask if they agree that it's so obviously wrong that it taints anything that I've got to say months or years later.

[worstblogever]

I am comfortable with this being a proxy for which of us has a better understanding of politics.

If you're going to gish-gallop around and spent a lot of time explaining why the obvious white nationalist isn't a white nationalist, and that you're still willing to play devil's advocate for him, you're proving the point. And regarding what I just quoted, this isn't a pissing contest of "who understands better" like this is a competition. It's just a test of common decency, and making sure this forum really is civil, and would reject white nationalism out of hand.

If it was a competition (it isn't) it's pretty easy to have a poor understanding if you're utterly incapable of criticizing your own party as it devolves into white nationalism, and reflexively defend some of the worst members of it while providing convenient silence to others who absolutely deserve criticism.

That right there... is a lack of understanding. That this should be some sort of contest, while missing the point that by someone not showing the spine to want your party to get better, and defending everything they do, it affects who the members of that party are. They have your support, no matter what.

That's a pretty simple truth that has somehow eluded being understood, as many on this forum stand around it like a Will Smith meme:

THE HIGH ROAD

...Hoping this might be the day where the dedicated Republican takes that high road, and express any kind of disappointment with the descent into white nationalism, fascism, and anti-democratic "win by all means" philosophy. Rather than see them feign offense at "personal attacks" that amount to, "being asked to not provide a defense of, or silent tacit approval of the white nationalists". Like you just chose to do, again, regarding Miller (who is clearly a white nationalist).

Please, take the high road.

[Tami]

Trump set up a trap for Biden, and Biden gleefully jumped right into it.

I understand Biden wanting to end this ASAP, but he did is A**backwards.

Evacuate the civilians, the Afgans who need to be evacuated, then and only then remove the troops.

[PwrdOn]

A look at the alternate timeline in America we just avoided.

Sadly at the cost of innocent Afghanis.

I ... actually agree.

I never agreed with the war but once you're in, you're there to support agree or not.

We didn't really leave them with a good enough system to protect themselves when we left.

Imagine if we did that same thing in Japan in the 45s-55s (pretty much anytime post WWII and pre Showa coup people being run out by 1955), South Korea pretty much anytime ... something similar probably would've happened.

Well the question we really have to ask ourselves is, WHY is it that whenever we get involved in these civil wars, our side never has any genuine public support and collapses the minute we withdraw our forces? Even in South Korea which is arguably the SOLE success story of American interventionism since the end of WWII, we prevented elections that were due to be held for the whole of Korea because the communists were sure to have won, in favor of installing a brutal military dictatorship in the South that didn't become a democracy until 1987. Neither the Soviets nor the Chinese have had to maintain a military presence in North Korea in order to prop up that regime, meanwhile we STILL have troops stationed in the South despite the fact its military is, on paper at least, vastly superior to that of the North, never mind the even greater gap in economic output.

The problem is that these states are always inherently fragile because their existence is entirely predicated on helping to advance American foreign policy interests, and thus they inevitably turn into societies wracked by self-contradiction and wacky internal politics. Going back to Korea as an example, the nationalist agenda of seeking Korean unification and extracting reparations from Japan for WWII is actually the left wing position, because the right wing must support the US-led status quo, which demands that South Korea fall in line behind Japan and the US to face off against the North. So despite being a formidable economic and cultural power, South Korea still remains sort of a nation lacking in any real identity except in relation to its neighbors, and has practically no avenue to advance its own geopolitical interests and must always remain loyal to its sponsor, even though it becomes less clear by the day how they actually benefit from that relationship.

This kind of corruption happens ALL the time too. When the West is tossing money into a warzone or international corporations are propping up thugs and warlords to get at Oil and natural resources the corruption is rampant. We see it all the time. Some of the most blatant corruption you have ever seen even down to a person basis is these countries where we are in them for natural resources. The first time I had to go to some of these countries in the oil industry and get to offshore assets for projects. It is shocking how blatantly corrupt they are. We need armed escorts to get to assets in certain countries. You can see how poor the populations are, but massive international corporations are there taking their oil and resources. Why are the actual people so poor though? Corruption.

Paying for access, "fees" to government agencies while somehow the actual populace isn't really seeing that cash for some reason.

Same thing with the military industrial complex. All that cash we pour in to support the war the troops the nascent government. Are they spending it correctly? Is it going where we are told its supposed to go? Are we getting what we are supposed to out of it? Our military leaders for decades the policy people that have told us what we are doing there has a point and a purpose have either been lying or so incompetent they didn't know this was never going to end well.

The thing about corruption is, building up strong and stable institutions is a long and difficult process, and in the absence of those people tend to revert back to informal networks of family and tribal ties. This sort of favor trading might work decently well in isolated communities eking out an existence in a subsistence economy, but when you start pouring in billions in foreign aid then people can't help but abuse their authority. It's kind of like what happens professional athletes from impoverished backgrounds sign a big contract for the first time, except on a massively larger scale.

[Tami]

Female mayor in Afghanistan says she's waiting for Taliban to 'come ... and kill me'

One of Afghanistan's first female mayors said Sunday that she is waiting for the Taliban to come and kill her as the Islamic militants reached the capital, Kabul.

"I'm sitting here waiting for them to come. There is no one to help me or my family. I'm just sitting with them and my husband. And they will come for people like me and kill me," Zarifa Ghafari, the mayor of Maidan Shar, told the British newspaper i. "I can't leave my family. And anyway, where would I go?"

Ghafari, 27, is Afghanistan's youngest mayor and the first women to hold the office in Maidan Shar in Wardak province.

[Spidey5640]

Trump set up a trap for Biden, and Biden gleefully jumped right into it.

I understand Biden wanting to end this ASAP, but he did is A**backwards.

Evacuate the civilians, the Afgans who need to be evacuated, then and only then remove the troops.

That's B.S. Biden was under no obligation to abide by whatever Trump agreed to. It wasn't a treaty it was policy. He changed policy on the border, on the Paris agreement, on the Iran nuke deal. I agree we need out of Afghanistan but this is a complete cluster and it falls on Biden. Everything you said could and should have been done. Biden made the call, not Trump or anyone else.

[worstblogever]

That's B.S. Biden was under no obligation to abide by whatever Trump agreed to. It wasn't a treaty it was policy. He changed policy on the border, on the Paris agreement, on the Iran nuke deal. I agree we need out of Afghanistan but this is a complete cluster and it falls on Biden. Everything you said could and should have been done. Biden made the call, not Trump or anyone else.

How would Biden magically put 5,000 Taliban prisoners released back in prison with a "policy change"?