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

[Tami]

An Open Letter to Tucker Carlson from a Hungarian Conservative

Editor’s note: Earlier this month, Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson visited Hungary. He was taken on various tours, broadcast several episodes of his nightly program from Budapest, spoke at a conference, and interviewed Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The following open letter to Carlson was written by Balázs Gulyás, a reporter for Magyar Hang (“Hungarian Voice”), which published it on August 24. The letter is presented here in English for the first time.

Dear Mr. Carlson –

You spent the last week in my country as a journalist and news anchor for the American Fox News network, broadcasting from Hungary, interviewing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and speaking at a festival sponsored by a foundation closely affiliated with the government, held in the city of Esztergom, the center of Roman Catholicism in Hungary.

I’m very flattered that your interests brought you to Hungary and that you learned a little bit about Hungarian culture. But let me get straight to the point: You’ve been had. I fear you’ve fallen victim to wishful thinking—when the desire to believe our assumptions are true becomes so great that we disregard evidence to the contrary. Of course, it might also be the case that you looked at only one side of the coin, since you were kept in a bubble in Hungary and met only people close to the government, all of whom share the same point of view. Still, don’t be too hard on yourself. It doesn’t only happen to foreigners. Hundreds of thousands of Hungarians have been mesmerized by Viktor Orbán’s siren song of family, history, tradition, and language—slogans you yourself mentioned in one of your shows. To be perfectly honest, for a while I myself believed Orbán would bring a new tone, fresh ideas, and build the kind of cultured and prosperous Hungary I longed for after suffering through horrible socialist-liberal governments from 2002 to 2010. I had to confront the fact that I was profoundly mistaken.

Dear Mr. Carlson! As a conservative Hungarian I agree with much of what you said in Esztergom, especially the parts where you philosophized. What you said about parenting, architecture, humor, the colonization of language, and the beauty of nature resonates deeply with me.

But when it comes to Orbán, you desperately want to believe that somewhere on this planet there exists a Christian conservative Disneyland. And since you want this so badly, you’ve turned a blind eye to evidence of the contrary. Maybe that Christian conservative Disneyland exists somewhere on this globe, but it can’t currently be found in Hungary. In fact, more and more people are recognizing this. Today the majority of conservative Hungarian intellectuals have left the ranks of Orbán’s party. Honestly, being conservative in Hungary today is not an uplifting experience. To witness day after day how the values and symbols that are important to you are used by a money-grubbing, power-grabbing autocrat to oppress his own nation does not put a person in a good mood. Indeed, the very Hungarians who profess conservative values are often the explicit targets of repression.

[Mister Mets]

Ross Douthat, one of the New York Times token conservatives, had a decent take on who is to blame in Afghanistan, and he's concerned that we'll go down this rabbit hole again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/o...tan-biden.html

All these arguments are connected to a set of moods that flourished after 9/11: a mix of cable-news-encouraged overconfidence in American military capacities, naïve World War II nostalgia and crusading humanitarianism in its liberal and neoconservative forms. Like most Americans, I shared in those moods once; after so many years of failure, I cannot imagine indulging in them now. But it’s clear from the past few weeks that they retain an intense subterranean appeal in the American elite, waiting only for the right circumstances to resurface.

Thus you have generals and grand strategists who presided over quagmire, folly and defeat fanning out across the television networks and opinion pages to champion another 20 years in Afghanistan. You have the return of the media’s liberal hawks and centrist Pentagon stenographers, unchastened by their own credulous contributions to the retreat of American power over the past 20 years. And you have Republicans who postured as cold-eyed realists in the Trump presidency suddenly turning back into eager crusaders, excited to own the Biden Democrats and relive the brief post-9/11 period when the mainstream media treated their party with deference rather than contempt.

Again, Biden deserves plenty of criticism. But like the Trump administration in its wiser moments, he is trying to disentangle America from a set of failed policies that many of his loudest critics long supported.

Our botched withdrawal is the punctuation mark on a general catastrophe, a failure so broad that it should demand purges in the Pentagon, the shamed retirement of innumerable hawkish talking heads, the razing of various NGOs and international-studies programs and the dissolution of countless consultancies and military contractors.

Small wonder, then, that making Biden the singular scapegoat seems like a more attractive path. But if the only aspect of this catastrophe that our leaders remember is what went wrong in August 2021, then we’ll have learned nothing except to always double down on failure, and the next disaster will be worse.

[babyblob]

Ross Douthat, one of the New York Times token conservatives, had a decent take on who is to blame in Afghanistan, and he's concerned that we'll go down this rabbit hole again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/o...tan-biden.html

Sadly she is right. I have heard way too many people talking about how the most power nation in the world was beaten by a 3rd world nation, we lost respect and power, we have to do something to make the world respect and fear us again before China and Russia think they can take advantage. Etc...

[Kirby101]

Sadly she is right. I have heard way too many people talking about how the most power nation in the world was beaten by a 3rd world nation, we lost respect and power, we have to do something to make the world respect and fear us again before China and Russia think they can take advantage. Etc...

This is a bad take. Militarily, we beat the Taliban when we first went in, an kept them from taking back the country. But then we tried to nation build in a country that has no real national identity with a corrupt government. We could have held Afghanistan with a force of tens of thousands of troops and vast sums, but in the end "the graveyard of Empires" lived up to it's name. Biden did the right thing, and did it better than most are giving him credit for.

[Gray Lensman]

Sadly she is right. I have heard way too many people talking about how the most power nation in the world was beaten by a 3rd world nation, we lost respect and power, we have to do something to make the world respect and fear us again before China and Russia think they can take advantage. Etc...

If you really want to get down to it, the failures in Afghanistan may have started in 1989, when George H W Bush failed to listen to Charlie Wilson when he said not to abandon the country once the Soviets were pushed out. Or maybe it should fall more on Reagan for not having a plan for when that happened, since Bush hadn't even been president for a month.

The war failures may very well stem from the peace failures a dozen years earlier.

[babyblob]

This is a bad take. Militarily, we beat the Taliban when we first went in, an kept them from taking back the country. But then we tried to nation build in a country that has no real national identity with a corrupt government. We could have held Afghanistan with a force of tens of thousands of troops and vast sums, but in the end "the graveyard of Empires" lived up to it's name. Biden did the right thing, and did it better than most are giving him credit for.

If you really want to get down to it, the failures in Afghanistan may have started in 1989, when George H W Bush failed to listen to Charlie Wilson when he said not to abandon the country once the Soviets were pushed out. Or maybe it should fall more on Reagan for not having a plan for when that happened, since Bush hadn't even been president for a month.

The war failures may very well stem from the peace failures a dozen years earlier.

I agree with both of these statements. But try telling that to the firebrands and hot heads who are just itching to get back into the next war so America can get that lost honor back.

[Ragged Maw]

Biden: “Fine. America will stop meddling in Afghanistan.”

Mark my words. The “damned if you don’t” is coming…..if it hasn’t already.

[PwrdOn]

This is a bad take. Militarily, we beat the Taliban when we first went in, an kept them from taking back the country. But then we tried to nation build in a country that has no real national identity with a corrupt government. We could have held Afghanistan with a force of tens of thousands of troops and vast sums, but in the end "the graveyard of Empires" lived up to it's name. Biden did the right thing, and did it better than most are giving him credit for.

What is war if not a tool for nation building? It was never an option to just go in, bomb a bunch of stuff to sate our post-9/11 bloodlust, and then just up and leave without cleaning up the mess, and anyone who suggests that we could have done so is absolutely a psychopath. Afghanistan has a national identity, and has been unified in the past and is on the way to being unified under the Taliban, the reason that WE couldn't hold it together is because we never gave a **** about the Afghans to begin with and that showed every step of the way through the occupation and the corrupt gang we installed to govern the place. In the end, Afghanistan will be better off with us gone, and Biden deserves credit for recognizing that.

[babyblob]

What is war if not a tool for nation building? It was never an option to just go in, bomb a bunch of stuff to sate our post-9/11 bloodlust, and then just up and leave without cleaning up the mess, and anyone who suggests that we could have done so is absolutely a psychopath. Afghanistan has a national identity, and has been unified in the past and is on the way to being unified under the Taliban, the reason that WE couldn't hold it together is because we never gave a **** about the Afghans to begin with and that showed every step of the way through the occupation and the corrupt gang we installed to govern the place. In the end, Afghanistan will be better off with us gone, and Biden deserves credit for recognizing that.

There was never a way for us to build Afghanistan the way we wanted. We are too different from a culture stand point. We tried to impose our way of goverment and life too fast. I am sure it rubbed people the wrong way as much as it made others happy. We didnt ask the Afgan people who they wanted in the government. Yea yea elections but it was a selection of candidates that the USA picked and played lip service to the USA. In no way were they going to fight after we left.

[Starter Set]

Well, it has pretty much always been the same pattern with America since 1945. 1) attack a weak country for some more or less debious reasons, 2) fail to finish the job and 3) leave the said country in shambles.

Rince and repeat.

Let's hope for a new way of doing things.

[JackDaw]

This is a bad take. Militarily, we beat the Taliban when we first went in, an kept them from taking back the country. But then we tried to nation build in a country that has no real national identity with a corrupt government. We could have held Afghanistan with a force of tens of thousands of troops and vast sums, but in the end "the graveyard of Empires" lived up to it's name. Biden did the right thing, and did it better than most are giving him credit for.

We probably expect too much of Presidents.

My gut feeling is that he made the right high level decision to get out. (But I have a strong bias against military actions in other countries.)

After that it’s up to other guys to “sweat the detail”….to make sure getting out is done in an orderly manner, with the minimum loss of life, and optimising long term relationship with the new regime.

In my eyes Joe B made the right call, and had the courage to stick to it. (He was..I think obviously shaken by the loss of life flowing from that decision..but, in my eyes, that reflects well on him.)

Right now…it’s looks possible that some of the subsequent detail was dealt with relatively poorly. But I don’t see that as really down to the President…he should be judged (I think) in 2 or 3 years time on the basis of whether the big decision to get out was ultimately wise.

[BeastieRunner]

[Jack Dracula]

US Presidents act on the intelligence provided by various agencies. In the case of Afghanistan, that intelligence was wrong. Indications were the Afghan military would defend the border long enough to at least allow for an orderly, well-planned evacuation as a worst case scenario or to successfully prevent the Taliban from entering permanently in the best case. This is why all that ordinance was left behind. Unknown to Biden was the Afghan military leadership had all been bribed by the Taliban ahead of time to quit their posts and immediately surrendered. The Afghan President may or not have been in on it as well since he immediately fled the country to Dubai. The soldiers hadn’t been paid or resupplied for weeks so when their Generals deserted they decided to follow suit. People can blame Biden, but in the face of the unexpected instant collapse of the Afghan military and government, his people managed to evacuate some 123,000 people included around 6000 Americans. Did they manage to get every single soul out? Of course not. It was practically impossible to do so. Do they wish they could have? You know they do.

[Tami]

This is a bad take. Militarily, we beat the Taliban when we first went in, an kept them from taking back the country. But then we tried to nation build in a country that has no real national identity with a corrupt government. We could have held Afghanistan with a force of tens of thousands of troops and vast sums, but in the end "the graveyard of Empires" lived up to it's name. Biden did the right thing, and did it better than most are giving him credit for.

The inherent 'Logic' in Nation building was that, if we could make Afghanistan stable enough and strong enough to take care of it;'s self, then we could leave without feeling guilty.

Who is to blame for that failing, hard to say right now.

I mean, it kind of makes sense. You go into a country, bomb it until the 'bad guys' are neutralized, then what do you do? Do you leave a battle scarred country alone without any assistance at all?

Or do you try to make up for it by doing things that you think might help, like training troops, investing in basic needs like education, and so on?

[PwrdOn]

There was never a way for us to build Afghanistan the way we wanted. We are too different from a culture stand point. We tried to impose our way of goverment and life too fast. I am sure it rubbed people the wrong way as much as it made others happy. We didnt ask the Afgan people who they wanted in the government. Yea yea elections but it was a selection of candidates that the USA picked and played lip service to the USA. In no way were they going to fight after we left.

Afghans are not unreceptive to Western culture, the country saw many sweeping liberal reforms in the 60s and 70s and benefited quite a bit from the competition between the superpowers for influence in the region. If we really offered in good faith to help them modernize their country and made sound investments while treating them as equal partners, even the most intractable Islamist could be swayed to appreciate the benefits of contemporary culture. Instead, we just went around shooting and drone striking everyone who looked at us funny, and we act all puzzled why Afghan women aren't more grateful for all the "freedoms" we've brought them, ignoring the fact that we are murdering their sons and husbands, because of course any honest accounting of civilian casualties will show that our forces were responsible for far more bloodshed than the Taliban ever were.