What is a good/reasonable response to this argument?
Our military interference has created more taliban than we’ve killed. There are more terrorists now than on 9/11. If we don’t get out of the Middle East until we defeat the taliban, we will never get out of the Middle East.
But we have to keep control of the oil in the middle east. The whole world can pull up tankers and fill up there, and nobody goes to war. Both Germany and Japan started WWII over access to oil. Remember when FDR cut off Japan's access to steel and oil and boxed them in?
The US armed the Taliban in the first place. Afghanistan is a trillion-dollar racket for arms manufacturers and oil companies, there is no humanitarian pretense as the question implies.
Don't forget all that sweet, sweet heroin; 90% of the global supply
I think it's less than 90% now that Taliban have been effectively banning it. But during the decade where American occupation and allied forces controlled most of the country, heroin production increased to outpace any other global supplier.
nothing fucked me up more than seeing the graph in this article. Like, 2001 it is almost eradicated after a Taliban ban only to be immediately restarted by the Yanks. Here it is on wikipedia if you can stand them over the Br*'ish
That's depressing; quick googling shows that about 12% of the land in Afghanistan is arable, out of 252k miles squared. Doing some math, at its peak better than 7% of all arable land was dedicated to opium...that's insane.
CW don't read, it is horrible:
It is from the torture playbook of the French and US state to finance their operations and bribes with illegal - often drug related - deals and securing, setting up etc. of productive facilities. The profits generates are used (on themselves - lol) and on repressing others (e.g. torturing people and killing up to 1 in 2) 'off the books'.
There really is just no limit to how low capitalists will go, is there? I keep learning, but am still shocked ever single time by how bad it really is. and I probably don't even know the half of it.
The Taliban literally live there, they will always be in Afghanistan and they will recruit more and more people since US/NATO forces and militias keep killing civilians and occupying their country. And the Taliban exist because we created, funded and armed their predecessors. Maybe those people should think of the Taliban as Pentagon's militia!
Also, most of the people who use this argument want the US to overthrow Assad, giving the country over to "moderate rebels" like Al Qaeda, ISIS and other similar groups, all of them are worse than the Taliban. So which is it, should extremists be fought against or given an entire country to rule?
"If we stop our brutal occupation now, the terrorists win!" is a line that I've heard since I was 6 years old, and "the terrorists" always seem to win regardless, so maybe the liars who lied us into this war are -and bear with me here- lying?
Tell them not to worry as US terror will continue unabated in Afghanistan regardless. If not via troops then hired mercenaries or CIA death squads. The US essentially supports Taliban because they are a good excuse to stay in a country so conveniently placed within the sphere of influence of both China and Russia, so the only way for the US to be done with the Taliban is to create a new extremist force in Afghanistan--they won't solve anything by being there because that's not the real reason US troops are there. Apropos, according to FAIR:
In reality, nearly 20 years of occupation has only led to a situation where zero percent of Afghans considered themselves to be “thriving” while 85% are “suffering,” according to a Gallup poll. Only one in three girls goes to school, let alone university.
And all of this ignores the fact that the US supported radical Islamist groups and their takeover of the country in the first place, a move that drastically reduced women’s rights. Pre-Taliban, half of university students were women, as were 40% of the country’s doctors, 70% of its teachers and 30% of its civil servants—reflecting the reforms of the Soviet-backed government that the US dedicated massive resources to destroying.
Today, in half of the country’s provinces, fewer than 20% of teachers are female (and in many, fewer than 10% are). Only 37% of adolescent girls can read (compared to 66% of boys). Meanwhile, being a female gynecologist is now considered “one of the most dangerous jobs in the world” (New Statesman, 9/24/14). So much for a new golden age.
Solution: The US stays there until they convince all Afghan citizens to join the Taliban. :think-about-it:
The amount of death and destruction caused by the American military (frame this as being partially 'accidental' destruction or 'they meant well' destruction for lib minds) has caused the people in the Middle East to become suspicious and jaded at the idea of a democratic republic or that America is actually good.
In 20 years the strongest nation in the world has failed to prop up a functioning government because American pencil-pushers and politicians won't listen to what the people living there are telling them and don't bother to consider the decentralized-government thinking already there. (This works on both libs and conservatives)
Tell them yes and if they have a problem with it they should join whatever evil mercenary company we're sending in after the withdrawal.
I'd just point out the fact that any kind of humanitarian argument falls apart when you look at the record of the US backed Afghan government. If you are already okay with Afghanistan being run by corrupt pedophiles, drug runners, war criminals and extremist then what exactly is the argument here?
Not to mention whatever sadistic stuff the CIA has been up to that will come out in 30 years.
Taliban never weren't in control: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=map+of+the+military+situation+in+afghanistan&ia=web
Look at how much green is in this map Aug 1, 2020: https://pic8.co/sh/SzIfU0.jpeg
this is like looking at a map of the 2020 US election and saying "it's mostly red, I don't see how trump lost"
Tell that person he/she/they doesn't care about the Taliban or anybody from Afghanistan, he/she/they just wants the US the keep a permanent military presence in another country to make him/her/them feel "safe" at the expense of others.
Unless you want it to be a permanent war-torn colony that's the only option.
They already control a majority of the country, and they live there too.
