CascadeOfLight [he/him]

  • 11 Posts
  • 1.11K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: May 13th, 2023

help-circle


















  • They're quite different, not least in terms of popular support. There was a TrueAnon episode recently about heroin in Afghanistan which I highly recommend, basically the national government installed by the US was made up of extremely unpopular, corrupt drug lords who the Taliban had previously beaten and forced out into the remote provinces back in the 90s. This made the Taliban broadly popular with the people, the majority of whom - outside the big cities - were already fairly religious and conservative.

    Then when the US invaded, they gathered up all these drug lords in Kabul and called it the 'Afghan National Government', who then spent 20 years being extremely corrupt drug dealers overseeing the most prolific narco-state of all time. So when the final Taliban offensive came, without overwhelming NATO support the 'government' just scattered and the 'army' (their gang enforcers) went home or switched sides, and the people just carried on with their lives with the Taliban more-or-less smoothly re-assuming administration.

    Whereas Syria has been a secular state since the 60s, and until the devastation caused by the civil war was one of the most highly developed countries in the region. Regardless of their performance, it has an actual regular, professional army as opposed to gang/mercenary auxiliaries. And Wahhabism, especially that of ISIS whoever the 'new guys' are, is extreme even compared to the Taliban and very unpopular amongst the majority of the Syrian population. And lastly, Russia hasn't backed out on Syria the way the US abandoned Afghanistan, so with all those factors together I don't see the Syrian state disintegrating in a handful of weeks the way the Afghan 'state' did.

    Though I can always be proved wrong sadness-abysmal


  • Interesting, I'd already done a physics degree before I became familiar with him, and I only read his "auto"biography after being suckered in by his reputation, but the one thing that really stayed with me from the book was his attitude that you should work solving physics problems because you enjoy it regardless of the consequences, and the outside world doesn't matter at all - clearly and not-so-subtly in regard to his work on the atomic bomb. Which even then, before I had any kind of actual political understanding, really rubbed me the wrong way, especially since this guy was apparently such an important and lauded person.

    So the fact his reputation and legend is wildly exaggerated and he was actually just an asshole puts that to rest for me.