Discussion and Debate Community Thread

[Cope]

None of that remotely addresses my own quote from your source nor does it support the claims you made earlier that the Taliban was a successor group to the Mujahideen. My own quote explciitly mentions Omar founding the Taliban in opposition to the Mujahideen.

You left out a good couple things form your last source. I'll post them for you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

Mujahideen is the collective name given to the jihadists who, funded/armed by the US and others fought first against the Soviet Union and the Najibullah government and then against themselves. The Taliban was founded and led by an Afghan mujahid who drew support from other mujahideen factions, particularly after they conquered most of Afghanistan. Simply pointing out that Omar was more puritanical/conservative than most of the other factions (even though he sanctioned jihad against other Muslims) isn't evidence that his group was't a successor movement of the anti-Soviet Islamists.

[Abdülmecid I]

I would hardly characterize the Soviet-backed PDPA, which seized power via military coup from another Soviet-backed strongman when he lost favor with the Politburo, as “the sovereign, legitimate” government in Afghanistan. The regime was no more or less “legitimate” than the monarchy which preceded them or the warlords who followed. Pakistan/USA did not ignite a “spark.” Afghanistan has been a crossroads of empires for centuries. The Soviets tried and failed to maintain a puppet state there, just like the British before them. The monarchy which ruled during the interim was just as unstable.

I agree that legitimacy is only subjectively determined, but there's no doubt about the Democratic Republic's sovereignty and international recognition. The point is that the US conspired against a fellow government, despite the fact that Afghanistan had done absolutely nothing to threaten American security or its regional allies. Essentially, what happened was that Washington sabotaged an entire people, because it did not tolerate the foreign policy a sovereign government was perfectly entitled to follow. This is pretty much the definition of aggressive imperialism. Gun-boat diplomacy adjusted into the special circumstances of a land-locked country.

The Taliban is solely responsible for the consequences of the Afghanistan war. If they had handed over bin Laden and ended support for AQ, there is little reason to suggest the US would have had reason to maintain a presence there for years fighting them. US forces went in to fight terrorists, and wound up bogged down in a bizarre nation building scheme with no end game. The real winner of the war is not the Taliban or the US, but Iran. The US was nice enough to go after Saddam, AQ, and the Taliban for them, clearing the way for Iran’s militias. Beijing and Moscow no doubt also appreciate the fact that the US spent trillions there instead of improving defense infrastructure and coordination in Europe and SE Asia.

This interpretation is a bit biased, because, by that logic, someone could argue that the fault for the war lies entirely with the US, as they refused any compromise about the al-Qaeda issue. Anyway, my point is that the current mess of Afghanistan is found stems from a variety of factors, whose origins can be safely traced back to the insurgency against the socialist regime. Corruption, disloyalty, religious fundamentalism and almost all the ills plaguing modern Afghanistan are directly related to the reactionary uprising, which was mainly fueled by tribal warlords, obscurantist clerics and rural nobility and which was generously supported by the United States. By the way, on a small historical note, the Democratic Republic survived even longer than her northern protector, collapsing only when one of its military officers betrayed it. The Mujahideen made the mistake of assuming that it was completely weak, so they launched a general attack, only to be completely annihilated by the regular army, during the battle of Jalalabad.

[sumskilz]

None of that remotely addresses my own quote from your source nor does it support the claims you made earlier that the Taliban was a successor group to the Mujahideen. My own quote explciitly mentions Omar founding the Taliban in opposition to the Mujahideen.

The conventional use of "the Mujahadeen" in English implies a specificity that wouldn't be recognized by the Afghans themselves. If it's not obvious, "mujahideen" simply means "jihadis/jihadists". What exactly constitutes a successor group is sort of vague in this context, but to say Omar founded the Taliban in opposition to the mujahideen is incoherent in the sense that Omar certainly considered himself a mujahid.

[Vanoi]

Mujahideen is the collective name given to the jihadists who, funded/armed by the US and others fought first against the Soviet Union and the Najibullah government and then against themselves. The Taliban was founded and led by an Afghan mujahid who drew support from other mujahideen factions, particularly after they conquered most of Afghanistan.

Except my sources contradicts you. Omar got his support from religious students and the help of Pakistan's ISI. You can't call them a successor group simply because later on in the war he got support from some Afghan rebels.

Simply pointing out that Omar was more puritanical/conservative than most of the other factions (even though he sanctioned jihad against other Muslims) isn't evidence that his group was't a successor movement of the anti-Soviet Islamists.

Sorry but your source was explicit. You can't call the Taliban a successor group when it was founded by 99.9% students and the help of Pakistan in opposition to the Mujahideen warlords and such left after the Soviet Afghan War.

The conventional use of "the Mujahadeen" in English implies a specificity that wouldn't be recognized by the Afghans themselves. If it's not obvious, "mujahideen" simply means "jihadis/jihadists". What exactly constitutes a successor group is sort of vague in this context, but to say Omar founded the Taliban in opposition to the mujahideen is incoherent in the sense that Omar certainly considered himself a mujahid.

You are overthinking my use of the word. When i say Mujahideen i refer to the Afghan warlords and such who were left after the Soviet Afghan War. He did found the Taliban in opposition to them. Not the entire movement or idea in general.

[PointOfViewGun]

Successors often become successor through fighting their predecessors. Just because a sub-group fought against the larger group doesn't take away the successor status from them if they succeed in taking over the country.

[Vanoi]

Successors often become successor through fighting their predecessors. Just because a sub-group fought against the larger group doesn't take away the successor status from them if they succeed in taking over the country.

It can't be called a successor group based on its founding not simply who they fought.

[Infidel144]

The obscurantist rebels opposed the government's attempts to centralise the Republic, to enforce the badly needed agrarian reform to the benefit of desperate Afghan peeasants and to pass secular reforms, in a society where rural laws were determined by the arbitrary rule of land aristocracy and the collaborating clergy.

Was the 'centralizing' of the Republic popular and did it introduce a harsh repression?
Did those "secular reforms" include tens of thousands of executions and mass torture?
How popular was the "agrarian reform" instituted by the PDPA?

[PointOfViewGun]

It can't be called a successor group based on its founding not simply who they fought.

So, its just random that you keep repeating the idea that they fought against other Mujahadeen?

[Vanoi]

So, its just random that you keep repeating the idea that they fought against other Mujahadeen?

It reinforces my point about their founding. As my quote says Omar founded the group in opposition to Mujahideen warlords who were left after the Soviet Afghan war. You can try to ignore that all you want but you have nothing to counter the evidence i posted.

[PointOfViewGun]

It reinforces my point about their founding. As my quote says Omar founded the group in opposition to Mujahideen warlords who were left after the Soviet Afghan war. You can try to ignore that all you want but you have nothing to counter the evidence i posted.

Sigh... Your interpretation of your evidence doesn't ring true. Successors often become successors despite fighting their predecessors. You either agree with that and feel no need to mention it or you do mention it and somehow think that the opposite is true...

[Vanoi]

Sigh... Your interpretation of your evidence doesn't ring true. Successors often become successors despite fighting their predecessors. You either agree with that and feel no need to mention it or you do mention it and somehow think that the opposite is true...

I don't see a shred of evidence or even you addressing the quote. Baseless conjecture will get you no where. My quote stands and supports my point perfectly fine. You have still yet to counter it. I'm waiting.

[Lord Thesaurian]

When mocked for tacitly accusing US critics of being Putin apologists:

Reeegio: "If the shoe fits, wear it!!"

When mocked for the incoherent, non-sequential nature of the aforementioned accusation:

Reeegio: "Nuh uh! You invented the shoe!!"

You decided to make yourself the punchline of a joke. So I said, if the shoe fits, wear it. Not sure what you’re going for, but so far all you’ve managed to do is mock yourself.

I agree that legitimacy is only subjectively determined, but there's no doubt about the Democratic Republic's sovereignty and international recognition. The point is that the US conspired against a fellow government, despite the fact that Afghanistan had done absolutely nothing to threaten American security or its regional allies. Essentially, what happened was that Washington sabotaged an entire people, because it did not tolerate the foreign policy a sovereign government was perfectly entitled to follow. This is pretty much the definition of aggressive imperialism. Gun-boat diplomacy adjusted into the special circumstances of a land-locked country.

To the extent the US “conspired” against any government in Afghanistan, it was in keeping with Cold War containment policy to fight the Soviets and prevent the spread of communism. To suggest the PDPA or its “foreign policy” were anything more than a function of its status as a Soviet satellite is naive at best. The PDPA was unpopular with the Afghan public, who viewed the atheist socialist regime as un-Islamic. When the Soviets invaded to knock over their own puppet government and install Karmal, subsequent defections from the Afghan army and widespread public opposition provided an ocean of recruits to the warlords. The PDPA collapsed shortly after their overlords in Moscow were no longer around to prop them up, but not before Soviet weapons had destroyed any modern infrastructure and reforms the PDPA had managed to build.

This interpretation is a bit biased, because, by that logic, someone could argue that the fault for the war lies entirely with the US, as they refused any compromise about the al-Qaeda issue. Anyway, my point is that the current mess of Afghanistan is found stems from a variety of factors, whose origins can be safely traced back to the insurgency against the socialist regime. Corruption, disloyalty, religious fundamentalism and almost all the ills plaguing modern Afghanistan are directly related to the reactionary uprising, which was mainly fueled by tribal warlords, obscurantist clerics and rural nobility and which was generously supported by the United States. By the way, on a small historical note, the Democratic Republic survived even longer than her northern protector, collapsing only when one of its military officers betrayed it. The Mujahideen made the mistake of assuming that it was completely weak, so they launched a general attack, only to be completely annihilated by the regular army, during the battle of Jalalabad.

As I said, the US negotiated with the Taliban following their rise to power in the 90s for the handover of bin Laden. Taliban leaders continued the same bad faith tactics, sometimes claiming they couldn’t hand him over because that wouldn’t look cool to other jihadists, other times claiming they didn’t know where he was. In 1999, they assured the US they had “restricted” bin Laden and that he therefore posed no threat. So US diplomats left the situation in the hands of the Taliban, reminding the latter they would be held responsible if bin Laden carried out any more attacks against the US. Then 9/11 happened. To suggest the US was unwilling to negotiate with the Taliban regarding OBL/AQ is not consistent with the historical facts.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/30...derfurth-memo/

The US exploited widespread opposition to the Soviet regime in Afghanistan to hurt the USSR, nothing more, nothing less. The Soviet invasion devastated the country and provided the warlords with all the men they needed to fill their ranks. During the civil war in the 90s, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia supported competing militias, which more or less weakened each other to the point of collapse, creating a power vacuum the newly created Taliban was able to exploit to seize power.

To the extent the US played a role in any of this, our mistakes were similar perhaps to those in Syria, first failing to support Massoud, and then trying to play the middle ground, supporting the Mujahideen groups considered to be more moderate or less radical while undermining the radical groups deemed impossible to control, thus preventing any consolidation. The root cause of the conditions which caused the civil war and allowed the Taliban to rise to power can be traced to the socialist regime itself which alienated and repressed much of the population, and the Soviet invasion ostensibly prompted by internal power struggles in the Afghan Politburo.

[Cope]

You decided to make yourself the punchline of a joke. So I said, if the shoe fits, wear it. Not sure what you’re going for, but so far all you’ve managed to do is mock yourself.

Your angry carping about the Europeans tells a different story about who was triggered by mockery.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Your angry carping about the Europeans tells a different story about who was triggered by mockery.

My remarking upon the irony of your decision to bring up being a “Putin shill” isn’t “angry carping.” Insisting others are “triggered by mockery” after you elected to self-identify with the butt of a joke speaks more to your own projection than to anything else.

[Cope]

My remarking upon the irony of your decision to bring up being a “Putin shill” isn’t “angry carping.” Insisting others are “triggered by mockery” after you elected to self-identify with the butt of a joke speaks more to your own projection than to anything else.

I couldn’t care less what European spectators have to say about US foreign policy when European leaders can’t even defend their own borders, much less project force beyond them. Choosing sides between the US and Russia is all they can do because they have no foreign policy vision of their own. Playing the middle and siding with the winner. It’s tragic, and I’m saying that with all sincerity.

Maybe next time you lose your temper and start arbitrarily hurling abuse at the Euros' defense capabilities, you should consider that you've marketed yourself on a European military outfit.

Irony indeed.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Maybe next time you lose your temper and start arbitrarily hurling abuse at the Euros' defense capabilities you, should consider that you've marketed yourself on a European military outfit.

Irony indeed.

Maybe the next time you lose your temper and lash out, unprompted, by self-identifying as a “Putin shill,” you could work on a more relevant retort than pointing out that Rome/Italy is located on the continent of Europe.

[Cope]

Maybe the next time you lose your temper and lash out, unprompted, by self-identifying as a “Putin shill,” you could work on a more relevant retort than pointing out that Rome/Italy is located on the continent of Europe.

As ever, I continue to be flattered by your imitation.

[Prodromos]

Trump is unpopular in Texas. The state won’t sit quietly

The Senate isn’t the only place where Donald Trump’s presidency hangs in the balance.

In Texas, the nation’s biggest, most important red state, Trump’s disapproval rating has consistently lagged behind many of the 30 states he carried in 2016. This potentially puts the state — a must-win for the president if there ever was one — in play for 2020.

To think Trump’s unpopularity in Texas is because of Twitter, or Ukraine, or the media, or a smear job by the left is to underestimate the problem. The reality is that Trump’s signature policies are out of step with what most Texans want.

Take Trump’s threat of tariffs against Mexico as punishment for the flow of unauthorized immigrants across the border. While railing against Mexico might work at a campaign rally in the Midwest, Texans perceive it as a direct threat to their bottom lines. Mexico is Texas’s biggest trading partner, accounting for nearly 35 percent of state exports in 2018. In comparison, Mexico accounts for only 5.8 percent of exports for Ohio.

Polling from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that roughly half of voters believe that tariffs against Mexico would hurt the Texas economy. Only 16 percent of suburban voters and 18 percent of women — coveted 2020 voting blocs — think tariffs on Mexico would benefit Texas.

The president did eventually stop threatening to use tariffs to punish Mexico over immigration. But one wonders whether Texans will easily forget how carelessly their economic health was leveraged for political gain and dubious ends.

Trump’s immigration policy is also unpopular. While one might assume that the state with the longest southern border, the largest share of Mexican Americans, and one of the highest rates of illegal immigration would appreciate Trump’s hard-line immigration approach, the opposite is true.

Texas has maintained one of the nation’s most moderate stances on immigration. It is one of only seven states — and the only red state — to provide in-state tuition rates and state financial aid to undocumented immigrants. Those provisions were signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Perry and a Republican-controlled legislature. More recently, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called the Trump administration’s separation of migrant families at the border “disgraceful.

Texas has been “majority minority” for more than a decade, with Hispanics expected to outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the next few years. Hispanics and non-Hispanics live by, work with, are friends with and go to school with each other, and this familiarity increases fondness. Which is why Trump’s fear and disparagement of immigrants — and Mexicans, in particular — falls flat here.

According to a Texas Politics Project poll, more Texans strongly disapprove of Trump’s immigration approach than strongly approve. Only 39 percent of Texans support additional federal spending on border barriers along the Mexican border, according to a November 2019 report by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center.

In the same poll, the majority of Texans — 60 percent — agreed that “We should find alternatives to immigration detention for families fleeing persecution and seeking refuge in the U.S.” And a majority, 65 percent, agreed that “unaccompanied children caught attempting to cross the border illegally should be placed into the care of child-welfare specialists, not border or immigration enforcement officials.”

To be sure, there are many aspects of Trump’s agenda that appeal to a state that prides itself on being open for business, including tax reduction and regulatory restraint. The same goes for judicial picks: While controversial nationwide, Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation had overwhelming support in Texas. And the value Texans place on Trump’s ability to hold the line in the culture wars — on issues including abortion, religious freedom and gun rights — should not be underestimated.

Even so, Trump remains underwater with most Texans. More Texas voters disapprove of Trump’s job performance (49 percent) than approve (43 percent), according to a recent poll conducted by the University of Texas at Tyler. According to FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s popularity in Texas remains far below what it should be given the state’s significant Republican lean.

Nonetheless, a state that should be a Republican shoo-in increasingly appears weary of the party’s standard-bearer. And if there’s anything I’ve learned living in Texas, it’s that Texans will not sit quietly and be taken for granted.

In 2012, Romney's margin was 16 points, far above Trump's 9 point win in 2016.

In 2020, who knows if Trump will carry the state at all.

[Love Mountain]

Trump is unpopular in Texas. The state won’t sit quietly


In 2012, Romney's margin was 16 points, far above Trump's 9 point win in 2016.

In 2020, who knows if Trump will carry the state at all.

Texas is becoming increasingly purple. So yes, it will be interesting to see whether Trump will be able to win the state. It might even come to a point where in 30 years, it'll be interesting to see if any Republican can win Texas.

[Cope]

Once Texas goes, the GOP as we know it goes. To survive, they'll have to reinvent themselves along the lines of the Eurocons. That will mean getting behind universal healthcare, higher taxation, more migration and drastically reduced military expenditure. It will also entail a general shift toward atheism and "social justice". This, I suspect, will coincide with the US ceding its place as the world's largest economy (within ~10 years) to the Chinese.