#refugeeswelcome

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
161

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

It is basically a chomskyesque tactic. Hey Al Qaeda might have done bad things but American imperialism is bad and they were bad first and were doing bad things before the formation of Al Qaeda so that is the focus![/quote]

You missed the part about Russian imperialism playing the biggest part in the formation of Al Qaeda. Everyone seems to forget that. It’s always the “bad Americans” did this and that… Had the Russians not invaded Afghanistan, Americans would not have funded rebel Islamic fighters.

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[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:
How does it look for the main nations responsible for the wars to turn their backs on the people now suffering from the rise of IS and other groups from the power Vacuum? [/quote]

It looks as though civilians always have and always will suffer when wars occur.

So?[/quote]

Well for example, after ww2, the U.S rebuilt Japan. Sent relief aid, allowed Japanese to immigrate to the U.S. Despite the fact the regime was an ultra-nationalist imperialist one that carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide throughout Asia and launched an aggressive war on the U.S, the regime had mass support amongst the Japanese.

The Iraq war was an unjustified, terribly executed war that has lead to anywhere up to a million deaths, the fall of governmental control in hundreds of thousands of miles of territory, now being controlled by IS and AQI. Millions of people lost their homes, their livelihood, they have no access to basic medical care, often not having electricity or access to secure water.

Our funding of AQS and other Syrian rebels who are basically AlQaeda in Syria, this has lead to a staggering amount of death, the rise of IS and Al Nusra, the complete loss of homes, water, electricity and the ability to make a living. This has placed millions of people under direct IS control, the men amongst them having to choose between starving along with their family, working for IS, or fleeing to the west.

So why are we helping the people affected by our wars, less than the nation and people who launched an aggressive war on us and committed genocide throughout their region of operations?

[/quote]

Because it was in our self-interest.

This isn’t some board game or sporting event with rules and fouls and “fair play.”[/quote]

It isn’t in our interest to let people fleeing IS, who otherwise would be forced to join IS (in IS areas IS are the only source of income for most fighting age men) come and live here and not join IS or Al Nusra or Islamic Jihad ?

IS hate the fact these people are leaving, it is in the wests interests to give these people refuge, it is also their moral obligation considering we created the vacuum and in many cases funded these groups when they were on the verge of being crushed in Syria.[/quote]

LOL.

No, it is not necessarily in our interest to allow masses of unidentified people flood into our countries.

As for moral obligation, well, did you miss the part about this not being some board game where everybody plays by rules? And anyway, our prime moral obligation is to insure the safety and well-being of our own.

You seem to be quite naive.
[/quote]

Says the guy who blames Russia for the rise of the Mujahideen and the internal faction that arose out of it the Taliban, not the UK and U.S for funding the Mujahideen. You just engaged in an incredible warp of logic. When you employ rhetoric where the actions of the west can always be justified or be deemed comparatively less bad even in circumstances when they clearly are worse, you will never feel the need to stray from that confirmation bias.

Here is your Chomsky rationale at work:

God damn Brits, French and Americans, if it wasn’t for making Germany pay war reparations then German elites would never have had to support and fund Hitler, so Hitler, the guys who funded him, all only existed because of British, French and American imperialism, without them and their policies German elites would never have had to back the national socialist movement and their rise to power. So it really is Americas and Britains and Frances fault, not the germans, or the German financiers of the Nazi party, or the nazi Party’s fault.

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[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

It is basically a chomskyesque tactic. Hey Al Qaeda might have done bad things but American imperialism is bad and they were bad first and were doing bad things before the formation of Al Qaeda so that is the focus![/quote]

You missed the part about Russian imperialism playing the biggest part in the formation of Al Qaeda. Everyone seems to forget that. It’s always the “bad Americans” did this and that… Had the Russians not invaded Afghanistan, Americans would not have funded rebel Islamic fighters.[/quote]

This is astounding.

Because remember guys, it isn’t the people funding and arming the Islamic radicals who caused the expansion of islamic Extremism, it is the people fighting against them.

This line of argument is especially stupid because we were funding and arming Jihadists across the entire region against secular socialist governments. We funded the Mujahideen and their insurgency against the DRA well before the soviets invaded Afghanistan, the reason they invaded was to help the DRA against the Jihadists we had been arming and funding and calling

These people were shooting kids for going to school, throwing acid in rape victims faces etc with our funding, arming and training long before the soviets went in. The soviet response to invade was because we armed an insurgency, we didn’t arm the insurgency in response to soviet occupation, we were funding before the invasion.

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[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

It is basically a chomskyesque tactic. Hey Al Qaeda might have done bad things but American imperialism is bad and they were bad first and were doing bad things before the formation of Al Qaeda so that is the focus![/quote]

You missed the part about Russian imperialism playing the biggest part in the formation of Al Qaeda. Everyone seems to forget that. It’s always the “bad Americans” did this and that… Had the Russians not invaded Afghanistan, Americans would not have funded rebel Islamic fighters.[/quote]

This is astounding.

Because remember guys, it isn’t the people funding and arming the Islamic radicals who caused the expansion of islamic Extremism, it is the people fighting against them.

This line of argument is especially stupid because we were funding and arming Jihadists across the entire region against secular socialist governments. We funded the Mujahideen and their insurgency against the DRA well before the soviets invaded Afghanistan, the reason they invaded was to help the DRA against the Jihadists we had been arming and funding and calling

These people were shooting kids for going to school, throwing acid in rape victims faces etc with our funding, arming and training long before the soviets went in. The soviet response to invade was because we armed an insurgency, we didn’t arm the insurgency in response to soviet occupation, we were funding before the invasion.

[/quote]

Brotha wake up. You acts like radical extremism is a new phenomenon. It’s been around as long as a certain guy named Muhammad was molesting 6 year old girls.

167

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

These people were shooting kids for going to school, throwing acid in rape victims faces etc with our funding, arming and training long before the soviets went in. The soviet response to invade was because we armed an insurgency, we didn’t arm the insurgency in response to soviet occupation, we were funding before the invasion.
[/quote]

I’m terribly sorry, but you’re completely wrong. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a response to a internal (de facto tribal - Pashto vs. Northeners) power struggle in the Afghan communist party (PDPA). As the Soviets were subsidizing Afghans with massive headline-grabbing infrastructure projects, they already had a foothold in the region in terms of engineers and some military advisory staff.

Babrak Kamral (see below for the bios of tho main characters) asked for Soviet military assistance to secure his position after his faction prevailed.

The Politburo reluctantly agreed after long prevarication as they could not lose face (especially in Africa) and turn down a request for help from a nominally communist regime.

The US intervention of behalf of the mujaheddin is a later development. A very stupid move, but it had nothing to do with the invasion itself, expect some Soviet paranoia that Amin was recruited by the CIA.

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[quote]loppar wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

These people were shooting kids for going to school, throwing acid in rape victims faces etc with our funding, arming and training long before the soviets went in. The soviet response to invade was because we armed an insurgency, we didn’t arm the insurgency in response to soviet occupation, we were funding before the invasion.
[/quote]

I’m terribly sorry, but you’re completely wrong. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a response to a internal (de facto tribal - Pashto vs. Northeners) power struggle in the Afghan communist party (PDPA). As the Soviets were subsidizing Afghans with massive headline-grabbing infrastructure projects, they already had a foothold in the region in terms of engineers and some military advisory staff.

Babrak Kamral (see below for the bios of tho main characters) asked for Soviet military assistance to secure his position after his faction prevailed.

The Politburo reluctantly agreed after long prevarication as they could not lose face (especially in Africa) and turn down a request for help from a nominally communist regime.

The US intervention of behalf of the mujaheddin is a later development. A very stupid move, but it had nothing to do with the invasion itself, expect some Soviet paranoia that Amin was recruited by the CIA. [/quote]

The Afghan Jihad was well underway before soviet intervention. The Americans and their Muslim allies were pumping funds and guns into the hands of the Islamic insurgency. That insurgency had American funding way before 1979 and to boil it down to a war within between the NA and Pashtun tribes.

Pre 1979 the same thing was going as as was after the invasion. America was funding the Islamists and the Soviets were funding the PDPA Daoud etc. Are you claiming that isn’t the situation?

America backed the Insurgency looking to topple the secular socialist state allied with the USSR, the USSR backed the PDPA and invaded to prop it up.

The U.S won the proxy war and Afghanistan got pushed back 100 years. This picture is Kabul in the 70’s under socialist governance. Look at the fucking place now.

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[quote]NorCal916 wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

It is basically a chomskyesque tactic. Hey Al Qaeda might have done bad things but American imperialism is bad and they were bad first and were doing bad things before the formation of Al Qaeda so that is the focus![/quote]

You missed the part about Russian imperialism playing the biggest part in the formation of Al Qaeda. Everyone seems to forget that. It’s always the “bad Americans” did this and that… Had the Russians not invaded Afghanistan, Americans would not have funded rebel Islamic fighters.[/quote]

This is astounding.

Because remember guys, it isn’t the people funding and arming the Islamic radicals who caused the expansion of islamic Extremism, it is the people fighting against them.

This line of argument is especially stupid because we were funding and arming Jihadists across the entire region against secular socialist governments. We funded the Mujahideen and their insurgency against the DRA well before the soviets invaded Afghanistan, the reason they invaded was to help the DRA against the Jihadists we had been arming and funding and calling

These people were shooting kids for going to school, throwing acid in rape victims faces etc with our funding, arming and training long before the soviets went in. The soviet response to invade was because we armed an insurgency, we didn’t arm the insurgency in response to soviet occupation, we were funding before the invasion.

[/quote]

Brotha wake up. You acts like radical extremism is a new phenomenon. It’s been around as long as a certain guy named Muhammad was molesting 6 year old girls.
[/quote]

Well here is Afghanistan before the U.S funded and armed Islamic fundamentalists. You tell me, did the U.S funding Islamic terrorists have any affect on the Afghan society?

171

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

America backed the Insurgency looking to topple the secular socialist state allied with the USSR, the USSR backed the PDPA and invaded to prop it up.

The U.S won the proxy war and Afghanistan got pushed back 100 years. This picture is Kabul in the 70’s under socialist governance. Look at the fucking place now.
[/quote]

First of all, Afghanistan is and always was a shithole. My brother did a tour with ISAF so I do have some knowledge about the country. Just because a tiny, urban, Soviet educated elite become Westernized in the 70ies doesn’t mean that anything changed outside of Kabul in a hundred fifty or so years since the local tribesmen hacked the British retreating.

It was a shithole in 2001, 1979, 1882 as well as 1841.

Calling Afghanistan “a socialist state” is a stretch. Usually, failed states tend to apply such grandiose definitions to tribal denominations.

Granted, although it seemed impossible, the Taliban rule was arguably the worst period in this group-of-warring-tribes called country, which says a lot.

To say that Pashtun in Afghanistan and in North West Province are backward is an understatement. Their visceral hatred for women is unusual even for muslims. As the old Pashto saying goes “there’s nothing more disgusting in the world than a woman, even your mother”. So, they are essentially Saudis before oil.

And the reaction to the Taraki reforms was to them “understandable” - they introduced such “devilish” plans such as agricultural reforms, introduction of literacy and elementary education for both sexes, which would have weakened the traditional role of the village/clan elders who were the only people who could read and controlled the village economy through the control of the meager agricultural output.

The US answer to the Soviet intervention is quoted in the article above, from Brzezinski’s mouth. No one is questioning billions of dollars funneled by the CIA to mujaheddin, but it is important to stress that the Soviet invasion more or less took the Americans by surprise.

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[quote]loppar wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

America backed the Insurgency looking to topple the secular socialist state allied with the USSR, the USSR backed the PDPA and invaded to prop it up.

The U.S won the proxy war and Afghanistan got pushed back 100 years. This picture is Kabul in the 70’s under socialist governance. Look at the fucking place now.
[/quote]

First of all, Afghanistan is and always was a shithole. My brother did a tour with ISAF so I do have some knowledge about the country. Just because a tiny, urban, Soviet educated elite become Westernized in the 70ies doesn’t mean that anything changed outside of Kabul in a hundred fifty or so years since the local tribesmen hacked the British retreating.

It was a shithole in 2001, 1979, 1882 as well as 1841.

Calling Afghanistan “a socialist state” is a stretch. Usually, failed states tend to apply such grandiose definitions to tribal denominations.

Granted, although it seemed impossible, the Taliban rule was arguably the worst period in this group-of-warring-tribes called country, which says a lot.

To say that Pashtun in Afghanistan and in North West Province are backward is an understatement. Their visceral hatred for women is unusual even for muslims. As the old Pashto saying goes “there’s nothing more disgusting in the world than a woman, even your mother”. So, they are essentially Saudis before oil.

And the reaction to the Taraki reforms was to them “understandable” - they introduced such “devilish” plans such as agricultural reforms, introduction of literacy and elementary education for both sexes, which would have weakened the traditional role of the village/clan elders who were the only people who could read and controlled the village economy through the control of the meager agricultural output.

The US answer to the Soviet intervention is quoted in the article above, from Brzezinski’s mouth. No one is questioning billions of dollars funneled by the CIA to mujaheddin, but it is important to stress that the Soviet invasion more or less took the Americans by surprise.

[/quote]

You make a valid point about how widespread the secularisation process had reached, yes it was mainly centred around Kabul, however, for example, hippies and westerners frequently vacationed in Afghanistan as well as lots of middle class tourists from neighbouring muslim nations. Yes society outside the main progressive hubs of the country were still backwards, however the Afghan Jihad transformed the entire nation.

The funding and arming of the extreme segments of Afghanistan and the flood of Sunni extremists who went to fight there changed the psyche of Afghanistan and took it back to a horrifically reactionary society. So yes Afghanistan pre-AfghanJihad was not a secular utopia, but it was lightyears ahead of what it became after the fall of the DRA.

If the west had not pumped billions into the Insurgency and the DRA had survived, Afghanistan today would of likely progressed to a much more secular and industrialised nation. The government did have some amount of populist support, their education drive was gaining ground even in the Pashtun tribal strongholds.

All that changed after the western funded insurgency started breaking into compounds and beheading foreign teachers and shooting children attending state ran schools. Their infrastructure programs and the building of roads and housing was trying to address the problem of disconnected warlord areas by connecting the rural areas to the city, basically removing warlords abilities to roll a boulder over the path and demand tribute to pass.

Do you accept the premise that had it not been for the western sponsored insurgency, Afghanistan would be today, in 2015, much closer to a western democracy than Saudi Arabia?

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[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

Do you accept the premise that had it not been for the western sponsored insurgency, Afghanistan would be today, in 2015, much closer to a western democracy than Saudi Arabia?

[/quote]

I’m afraid not. That’s wishful thinking. The social capital of a people inhabiting a certain geographical region changes VERY, VERY slowly.

Case in point - Pakistan. Is Pakistan even remotely close to something called a Western democracy with their beheadings and acid attacks on schoolgirls? What about dictatorships in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan or Kyrgyzstan who have experienced much longer Tzarist Russian/Soviet attempts to root out islam? Or Chechnya for that matter with their bizarre mix of a quasi independent tinpot strongman/street thug/islamic extermist personal fiefdom?

Don’t get me wrong, the Western involvement in Afghanistan was a spectacular long term disaster because the islamic countries used the US of A to further their goals under the guise of anti-communism for which the American fell.

However, this wouldn’t have had a discernible impact of the daily lives of the majority of Afghans. It would still be one of the poorest countries in the world with rampant tribal strife. Building a dam or two as the Soviets did or launching an irrigation project here and there wouldn’t have changed much.

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[quote]loppar wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

Do you accept the premise that had it not been for the western sponsored insurgency, Afghanistan would be today, in 2015, much closer to a western democracy than Saudi Arabia?

[/quote]

I’m afraid not. That’s wishful thinking. The social capital of a people inhabiting a certain geographical region changes VERY, VERY slowly.

Case in point - Pakistan. Is Pakistan even remotely close to something called a Western democracy with their beheadings and acid attacks on schoolgirls? What about dictatorships in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan or Kyrgyzstan who have experienced much longer Tzarist Russian/Soviet attempts to root out islam? Or Chechnya for that matter with their bizarre mix of a quasi independent tinpot strongman/street thug/islamic extermist personal fiefdom?

Don’t get me wrong, the Western involvement in Afghanistan was a spectacular long term disaster because the islamic countries used the US of A to further their goals under the guise of anti-communism for which the American fell.

However, this wouldn’t have had a discernible impact of the daily lives of the majority of Afghans. It would still be one of the poorest countries in the world with rampant tribal strife. Building a dam or two as the Soviets did or launching an irrigation project here and there wouldn’t have changed much.

[/quote]

I don’t think Pakistan is a fair comparative example because the secular state of the DRA was not dealing with the Islamists within the state or the ISI etc. The developmental path can’t be seen as similar. Pakistan and Egypt for example in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s coopted Islamist movements and used them to try and stop the destabilisation of the countries (Nawaz and Harris talk about this phenomena very eloquently). Pakistan was also irreparably changed by the Afghan Jihad, note the Pakistani Taliban being the main Islamic fundamentalist insurgency (the TTP came about after Pakistani incursions into Afghanistan to fight the Taliban on the border, they crossed and amassed and the rest is history). Most of the Pakistani Taliban are Veterans of the Afghan Jihad.

This actually underlines how monumental the blowback was for the entire region, after funding the Afghan Jihad against a secular state. This is actually a good example of my premise. If the west had not funded the Mujahideen, which slipped into the Pakistan, the Taliban would not be in Pakistan. The development of the contemporary Pakistan was forged through the Afghan jihad. Not just an example of how Muslim nations won’t progress.

I think a better comparison would be Indonesia and I think the fact Afghanistan was, under the DRA, going through a quite intense process of secularisation and education and infrastructure advances, it would of become even better than the success story in Indonesia. Obviously Indonesia is not perfect, but it is far better than Pakistan and current Afghanistan.

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[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

I don’t think Pakistan is a fair comparative example because the secular state of the DRA was not dealing with the Islamists within the state or the ISI etc. The developmental path can’t be seen as similar. Pakistan and Egypt for example in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s coopted Islamist movements and used them to try and stop the destabilisation of the countries (Nawaz and Harris talk about this phenomena very eloquently). Pakistan was also irreparably changed by the Afghan Jihad, note the Pakistani Taliban being the main Islamic fundamentalist insurgency (the TTP came about after Pakistani incursions into Afghanistan to fight the Taliban on the border, they crossed and amassed and the rest is history). Most of the Pakistani Taliban are Veterans of the Afghan Jihad.
[/quote]

Let’s not put too much emphasis on the Afghan blowback. Pashtuns are on both side of the border and their habit of carrying firearms on them at all times (AK 47 is also part of the dress code in Yemen) and quarreling with other village clans wasn’t caused by returning veterans. Pashtuns were a fertile ground for outside meddling who explained to them they’re doing the right thing.

This premise does not take into account the forging of the Pakistani identity through Partition and the subsequent East Pakistan catastrophe.

How would you explain terrorist attacks in Kashmir and the perennial obsession with India?

[quote]
I think a better comparison would be Indonesia and I think the fact Afghanistan was, under the DRA, going through a quite intense process of secularisation and education and infrastructure advances, it would of become even better than the success story in Indonesia. Obviously Indonesia is not perfect, but it is far better than Pakistan and current Afghanistan.[/quote]

No, more apt comparisons are other Central Asian stops on the Silk Road - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan. Islamic rebellions, former communist party cadres turned murderous dictators flirting with radical islam…and poverty. Lots of poverty.

Take this fine gentleman. And yes, the phrase “boiled alive” is used in the article below:

Indonesia, ignoring the obvious fact that they had engaged in deliberate genocide on Timor, is a completely different matter. An entity in SE Asia straddling numerous islands with vastly different cultures and languages, and which had been part of international trade routes for two millennia cannot be compared to a landlocked mountainous Afghanistan.

Suharto operated in a completely different geographical, political, military and social context so there is virtually no way to compare the two.

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[quote]loppar wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

I don’t think Pakistan is a fair comparative example because the secular state of the DRA was not dealing with the Islamists within the state or the ISI etc. The developmental path can’t be seen as similar. Pakistan and Egypt for example in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s coopted Islamist movements and used them to try and stop the destabilisation of the countries (Nawaz and Harris talk about this phenomena very eloquently). Pakistan was also irreparably changed by the Afghan Jihad, note the Pakistani Taliban being the main Islamic fundamentalist insurgency (the TTP came about after Pakistani incursions into Afghanistan to fight the Taliban on the border, they crossed and amassed and the rest is history). Most of the Pakistani Taliban are Veterans of the Afghan Jihad.
[/quote]

Let’s not put too much emphasis on the Afghan blowback. Pashtuns are on both side of the border and their habit of carrying firearms on them at all times (AK 47 is also part of the dress code in Yemen) and quarreling with other village clans wasn’t caused by returning veterans. Pashtuns were a fertile ground for outside meddling who explained to them they’re doing the right thing.

This premise does not take into account the forging of the Pakistani identity through Partition and the subsequent East Pakistan catastrophe.

How would you explain terrorist attacks in Kashmir and the perennial obsession with India?

That is the problem though, I don’t think we can draw a direct comparison between Afghanistan and any other place, you can show some parallels but nothing close enough to reliably predict where it would be in 2015.

Those initial education and infrastructure drives in Afghanistan seemed to be having more success than they did in most similar places. I could of seen them working over 2 or 3 decades and leading to a stable and integrated Afghanistan. Not a beacon of peace and democracy, but a society far better than present day Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

God damn Brits, French and Americans, if it wasn’t for making Germany pay war reparations then German elites would never have had to support and fund Hitler, so Hitler, the guys who funded him, all only existed because of British, French and American imperialism, without them and their policies German elites would never have had to back the national socialist movement and their rise to power. So it really is Americas and Britains and Frances fault, not the germans, or the German financiers of the Nazi party, or the nazi Party’s fault.
[/quote]

Ok we get it, you’re another poster who blames America for all of the world’s troubles.

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[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]DBADNB1 wrote:

God damn Brits, French and Americans, if it wasn’t for making Germany pay war reparations then German elites would never have had to support and fund Hitler, so Hitler, the guys who funded him, all only existed because of British, French and American imperialism, without them and their policies German elites would never have had to back the national socialist movement and their rise to power. So it really is Americas and Britains and Frances fault, not the germans, or the German financiers of the Nazi party, or the nazi Party’s fault.
[/quote]

Ok we get it, you’re another poster who blames America for all of the world’s troubles.[/quote]

Hey, everybody needs a hobby!
[/quote]

A rare moment of agreement among us. I suppose the US is also to blame for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

If you want to blame anyone for the punitive nature of the post-WWI settlement, blame the French. If Theodeore Roosevelt had been President in 1914, the US would have very likely entered the war much earlier. This is because of TR’s firm understanding of balance of power theory, which he became well versed in during his education in Europe. Because of the US’s decisive and early entry into the war, the conflict would have been significantly less bloody and protracted, which would have tempered French revanchism.