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Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

theguardian.com

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Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#351

Post by vxNsr »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #247
vxNsr wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If every US president held Russia’s feet to the fire when the CIA had “weak to moderate” intel we’d be banging two rocks together for fire because WW3 would’ve happened already. Stop pretending to care.

Because there is no middle ground between sucking up to Putin and going to nuclear war with him.

Because while trump was increasingly trying to isolate Russia for its bad behavior comrade Biden rolled over in his first meeting and removed a bunch of restrictions.

The story wasn’t that “Russia had a bounty on US soldiers” instead it was “Trump knew that Putin put out a bounty on US soldiers” neither story is true but you only really care about the second one because OMB.

The point is your crocodile tears are a sad excuse for caring.

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#352

Post by michael1999 »

kodah wrote: post #349
michael1999 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were careful with your claims, and I can understand your desire to defend the reputation of the regular uniforms. But you can imagine how unsatisfying that kind of lawyerly response is to someone on the outside who watches the USA do whatever they damn well please, much less someone kin to the kidnap/torture victims.

I think in my most recent memory "war crimes" is a trigger word for an event where a bunch of "activists" harassed active duty service members live on Twitch about war crimes. I shouldn't conflate the two, but they're easily conflatable given how hyperbolic issues are at this point.

People are people. But don’t forget - many people consider the second invasion of Iraq an aggressive war of choice. And that makes every single participant a war criminal. From Bush on down to your friends.

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#353

Post by random314 »

rayiner wrote: post #279
mschuster91 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re completely overlooking how unprepared Afghans are for secular democracy. Provide people with tangible benefits they gain from democracy and then it will come as naturally as they flock to the Taliban simply because they promise to get rid of the Western countries. The West didn't do anything to actually promote democracy and provide a perspective for the people, and then we all wondered why the Taliban were…

That’s not how it works. Democracy isn’t something you can gift like Prometheus giving humans fire. It’s something that must rest on a society’s cultural foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom Britain dropped some criminals in Australia and they created a prosperous democracy. Because the people had a millennium of cultural development under its belt to support democracy. Meanwhile democracy…

> The British spent 200 years in the country building institutions and culture.

That is a sorry description of colonialism.

Your theory of "cultural development" also doesn't explain how Germany chose through elections to turn itself in to a Nazi state.

As an aside, Zakaria is a talking head, part of the news as entertainment complex - sticking to the mainstream narrative as close as possible while trying to appear insightful at the same time. He is neither a historian, economist or sociologist and is a known plagiarist. Why would anyone want to read his books?

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#354

Post by bayesian_horse »

ryneandal wrote: post #297
bayesian_horse wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have often been buddhist, muslim and other kingdoms or larger military organizations in power in Afghanistan. It's not that the borders don't make sense, it's that the area as a whole is hard to rule and it's hard to pay for that ruling. Currently one could argue that the medieval kind of "political technology" used by the Taliban is superior to the democratic political technology, for this very reason.

Re-watched the video I was misremembering, and they're iterating exactly what you mentioned. I learned more about Afghanistan from this than anything in the news for the past two decades -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9zK8yT4_Y

Also the win condition of the government and government forces was to keep order in all of Afghanistan, guarantee the rights of women, and generally promote economic progress.

The Taliban's win condition was basically to inflict just enough damage the former condition would be impossible. Their troops are not far removed from criminals themselves: they loot, rape and torture.

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#355

Post by sumedh »

fogihujy wrote: post #340
sumedh wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That doesn't stop the rest of us from holding our politicians accountable, though. So your country goes against the US, the US retaliates by stopping trade. People in your country lose jobs, people demand the govt to fix things, what is your govt going to do then? It easy to say our politicians should be accountable, real life is more complicated though.

I honestly doubt the current U.S. administration would do anything if say, Denmark started internal inquiries about whether their politicians' decision to participate invade Iraq was made on false grounds. If they did, the EU would probably not be happy about trade sanctions. Denmark was obviously just an example, but there are a lot of U.S. allies, trading partners and so on, that all have assisted or participated i…

You gave Denmark as an example, sure they can do it. Denmark's trade with US is very tiny but lets say Russian submarines start showing up near Greenland, what is Denmark going to do, they will go to NATO where you have US calling the shots.

Once Russia starts making some noise, all European countries will need US protection.

Re: Guantánamo survivor on the war on terror’s failure

#356

Post by ryneandal »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #354
ryneandal wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re-watched the video I was misremembering, and they're iterating exactly what you mentioned. I learned more about Afghanistan from this than anything in the news for the past two decades -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab9zK8yT4_Y

Also the win condition of the government and government forces was to keep order in all of Afghanistan, guarantee the rights of women, and generally promote economic progress. The Taliban's win condition was basically to inflict just enough damage the former condition would be impossible. Their troops are not far removed from criminals themselves: they loot, rape and torture.

I mean, we've seen conclusively with leaks like Collateral Murder -- there are no winners in war.
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