this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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The weird thing is that they used to be in power, before the 9/11 American "freedom spreading" spree in the region.
Nah, those guys were boomers/gen-xers and have probably either all died off or retired from this nonsense. The Taliban in charge now are millennials/zoomers who likely grew up getting told all about the glory days but not the drudgery.
And who probably skipped school since those were all gender integrated under the NA government the US was backing
And they were in power because the US helped them get there. This article praising Osama bin Ladenisn't The Independent's finest hour 😬
That's not what happened,
The US sent Pakistan materials to supply to local Mujihideen to provide support to the US assisting the Northern Alliance, AKA the guys they were later supporting against the Taliban once the Taliban basically all but chartered the planes for Bin Laden.
You'd be amazed how many of america's problems in the region trace in some way back to "Pakistan did it."
Like it's not unreasonable to guess that Kissinger croaked because his old heart couldn't take how America's foreign policy was becoming way more aligned with those "commies" in India after just a few terrorisms and genicides on Pakistan's part.
With the help of the US, of course, as is often the case when atrocities occur around the world..
Your name is "Viking_Hippie". I assume you're embracing a Scandinavian heritage of some kind.
Vikings committed atrocities all over Europe. Genetic studies of Icelandic people indicate that their Y chromosomes are from Scandinavia and their mitochondrial DNA is from Ireland. Mitochondrial DNA only comes from your mother (from the egg).
Why do you think Iceland was settled by mainly Viking men and Irish women? Do you think those women willingly left their homes or did they leave at the point of a sword?
I'm embracing the modern colloquial meaning of "lives in Scandinavia" (which I have since my birth 40 years ago), not the historical "commits atrocities" meaning.
You'd think that people would come to that conclusion by doing just a minimum of research into colloquial uses of regional terms before accusing me of embracing the worst acts of my ancestors.
If that's too difficult, then maybe the second half, which is much more descriptive about how I am when not discussing politics with idiots online, would be a bit of a clue 🤦
The point is that US aid ended up in taliban hands in spite of US policy, not because of it. We know for a fact that the US would have broken ties had Pakistan's enthusiastic cooperation with the Taliban and Al Qaeda been more understood at the time, and we know that because that's exactly what happened when it was uncovered that the mass shooting spree Al Qaeda launched in India was carried out using weapons supplied to Pakistan specifically to give to local resistance fighters against the Taliban.
Granted, the US should definitely have guessed better at the time given how Afghanistan routinely makes irredentist claims on Pashtunistan and Balochistan, meaning Pakistan would NEVER be a reliable ally in stabilizing the country, IE making it more able to press such claims with authority and millitary force, but the point still stands that people are waaaaay mischaracterizing the role the US plaid in the Taliban's rise.
So because the government violated policy it wasn't the US doing it?
Highly doubtful. The US never had any compunctions propping up some of the worst human rights abusers in the world if there is a strategic or economic advantage to be had. See for example every right wing dictator in South America, Saudi Arabia and various genocidal governments of Israel.
It really doesn't. They LITERALLY couldn't have done it without both direct and indirect help from the US.
Guy I'm literally spelling it out for you, it happened because Pakistan was constantly lying about what it was doing with the stuff the US gave it
If I take a sandwich you gave me and hand it to someone I know is gonna deck you, that doesn't mean you punched yourself in the face just because you should have known better.
Yeah, that analogy doesn't translate to international aid and also doesn't explain why the US treated Pakistan as a trusted ally from the start of the Afghanistan war until finding the Osama bin Laden complex there.
Nothing will convince your Dunning Kruger poster boy ass, though, so we're done here. Have the day you deserve.