From happyfeet, channelling BJ’s comments from Jeff’s post of yesterday:
Fred Kaplan pimps the “resurgent Taliban” lie to service a wholesale revision of the historical record…
The real problem goes back still further. When the United States helped kick the Soviet army out of Afghanistan in the 1980s, we left soon thereafter – the goal was to defeat the Russians, not help the Afghans. And so the Taliban filled the vacuum. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States kicked the Taliban out of Kabul; but – remarkably – we left again, to go oust Saddam Hussein. The Taliban and al-Qaida never fully went away; now they’re back in force.
This sort of thing is so common as to pass without notice, sadly, but our own BJTexas has the corrective…
I want to revisit Kaplan’s odious piece of three card monte with one playing card and two blanks. That idiocy is just the sort of compressed and absolutist historical rigging that the twooth to powre squad finds edgy and delicious. Fred brews the Kool-Aide bright red and sickening sweet with no nutrients to feed The Narrativeâ„¢. Drink down, twoothers, and be mislead.
the United States helped kick the Soviet army out of Afghanistan in the 1980s, we left soon thereafter – the goal was to defeat the Russians, not help the Afghans.
So Kaplan rejects the realpolitique that is, ironically, so intimately a part of the current anti-war movement and the Paulines. The national self-interest built into a successful strategy of bleeding the Soviets of lucre, blood and will is a selfish act born of our outworldly narcissicm. The fact that not all of the rebels were jihadists seems to have been misplaced by poor Fred and the tinfoil brigade who swallow this heady concoction.
And so the Taliban filled the vacuum.
Fred fails to mention the ouija board session he had in the early nineties that predicted the rise of a Taliban years after the Soviets tucked tail and ran. Those pesky dirt-poor peasant madrassa students. You just can’t trust them. Other than the compression of years of warlord infighting after the the overthrow of the communist-supported government anyone with the proper divination would have clearly seen the rise of an obscure set of students building a rebellion from the ground up, fueled by Pakistani intelligence money, to the very stunning point that they coalesced popular support and took over most of the country. Of course, Mullah Omar being one of the very few members to be old enough to claim jihadist alumni status supports our guilt in creating these wackos in the vacuum of our advisor’s absence. Compression and redirection wins! Thank you, sir, and may I have another?
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States kicked the Taliban out of Kabul; but – remarkably – we left again, to go oust Saddam Hussein.
RTO, Major John, et al? It’s only a dream, ‘thugs! No doubt fueled by neocon delusions. Apparently Fred is basing this assumption on the lack of Fwench participation because never there equals there and left. Brilliant! Brew me another tankard!
The Taliban and al-Qaida never fully went away; now they’re back in force..
As RTO has pointed out a gazillion times, the troops that were there and left continue to kill both leaders and foot soldiers of the “resurgent” Taliban and al Qaeda in rather frightening numbers. The fact that the missing can do that from Iraq is a testament to their range skills. And Halliburton. But not Kyoto. Chug it!
The fact that Kaplan drew a paycheck for this unserious and totally ludicrous piece of self-serving commentary causes me to laugh in a disturbingly maniacal way, just before my friends have to waterboard me for a day. FOR THE EQUILIBRIUM!
Drink deeply, my friends, but take shallow breaths.
Heh! I was just about to clean up the spelling and grammer and post it in the pub. Who are the Fench anyway?
TOP OF THE FOLD, BITCHES!
My bad, sorry BJ. I did the spellcheck thing in th Y! mail window and it’s really crampy and not really good for that sort of thing.
I fixed it.
No problem, feets! My fragile ego is assuaged.
It should be pointed out that Kaplan makes several good points in his article about the reluctance of NATO nations to commit troops to the “good” conflict that will actually have to do, you now, real fighting. It is a sad commentary on the squishiness of European commitment when the ROE has to be taylored amended to meet the various needs of support but no fighting or fighting but not at night or defending the north but not the south.
As is Kaplan’s want he can’t help but sully a fairly reasonable analysis with that paragraph for the sole purpose of paying lip service to The Narrative™.
I guess, but it’s weird how the international coalition that is NATO in Afghanistan is the prescription the moonbats decried Iraq for lacking. I get so confused.
It’s the perpetual motion machine gone haywire. Why can’t we fight insurgencies with video ganme efficiency. Ask NATO to come in and you are stuck with “They won’t fight” which means more of our troops need to be deployed. Deploy more troops and the motion machine kicks out the demand for more huggable multi lateral participation. All of which results in the ongoing Albrightist lament about our world reputation.
I think I’ll just brew me a fruity drink.
John Rambo kicked ass in Afghanistan. We’re just following his lead.
This is just another small step in the Left’s journey toward the creation of a complete alternate history, from the original legal code of Hammurabi (copied from a Kwanzaa pamphlet) to the antics of the bumbling yet world-dominating giant evil space lizard Jorge McHitlerburton, bravely opposed by all the ex-hippies, who conspired by sending notes with the help of secret compatriots guarding the forced labor camps for “dissenters.”
Merovign:
I agree but maintain a fervent hope that those tasked to attempt the rewrite will do so in a sneaky and comprehensive way. Kaplan’s paragraph frosts me in its juvenile re-imaging.
It requires imagination, tireless negotiations, heaps of money…
And bushel-baskets of dead Tali… four!
There are four…
Tireless Negotiators. They’ll fix things. Maybe they could try negotiating harder, too.
Well, guinspen, Cindy Sheehan did say that we needed to replace the army with “an army of diplomats” in both Iraq and Afganistan.
That way you’ll also have tireless martini drinkers.
FOR THE RECONCILIATION!
Tireless negotiators don’t fix anything.
They just walk alot.
Cindy Sheehan. I remember her.
As long as we remember her, she’s not really gone.
Dammit.
Funny how Old Cindy! has disapeared since she moved her camp to Pelosi’s house, huh?
Nope, no leftist bias there.
Fred, of course, as a former Clinton defense poobah, mixes apples and oranges. The Taliban, was a small subset of the Peshawar Seven Council
that directed the mujahadeen.
Particularly Maulvana Younis Khalis and fellow graduates of the Huqqaniya
mosque in North Western Pakistan, like
Sami ul Haq (they were funded by Saudi General Intelligence bigwigs like Clinton classmate Prince Turki (future
ambassador to US & U.K.)and ISI in the
latter stages, by moonbat General Hamid
Gul. AQ, arose from morea extensive cross section of the leading Salafi/Wahhab currents directed by J’aamati’s like Hekmatyar, Saudi trained Raisul Sayyaf and company. They were not the largest faction, yet
they were the most well funded, by the
above mentioned parties. Bin Laden, by contrast was a free lance money man who followed the teachings of his mentors Abdullah Azzam, Mohammed Qutb, and his “sunday school teacher” Ahmed Badeeb, to Pakistan. Ironically, the most tenacious fighters were those
tied to Shah Massoud, and Abdul Haq, who were in loose confederation with
Rabbani and the moderates associated with former King Zahir Shah; the ones
referred to as the “Gucci moderates”.
Since they didn’t agree with the ISI’s
view of Afghanistan as forward station
against India. they got “Jack” Agency
middle men like Bearden, clearly were clueless as to the people they were supporting. And people who should have known like Vincent Cannistraro due to his previous tour in Jiddah, when Agee outed him; weren’t telling. In short, the Taliban and AQ were in part, an integral part of the Pakistani Afghan society and they weren’t going any where.
In short, the Afghan operation was a much more expansive of the British operation in the Levant during World War 1. The Cairo branch of the Foreign Office ‘Intrusive’ ran Sheik Ali of the
Hahemites, who aided the Brits against the Turks and the Germans (cue Lawrence
of Arabia)However, the real winners were Ibn Saud, who didn’t do ‘jack’ against the Germans, who as partners with the Wahhabi Ilkwan were generational enemies to the Brits (going back to their role in Indian mutiny, through their sponsorship of Deobandism; re; Dalrymple’s the Last Mughal)for they had a more important mission, conquer Arabia and drive out the “Custodians of the Mosques”. St. John Philby,formerly of the India branch who steered the supplying of Ibn Aziz; was so alienated from the British establishment, that he allowed
this treachery to take place. It’s a short step from that treachery to son
Kim’s allegiance to the closest parallel to the Wahhabi’s; the Soviets.
The Brits still havn’t learned a thing after nearly a century; allowing the
likes of the Finsbury Park Mosque. the
upcoming Tabligh Jamaat mosque, the hate books shop run by former Saudi diplomat Dabashi. The last three Saudi
ambassadors to the Crown have been the
former Saudi health (now sewer chief)
Al Ghosaibi, who as Mark Steyn has pointed out, wrote poetry extolling suicide bombers. the above mentioned
Prince Turki, and until recently, another princeling former Gen, Intell.
head, Prince Muqrin. They aren’t even showing any pretense, anymore. (We shouldn’t feel too smug, our envoy is
the seemingly clueless Al Jaber, a protege of Dick Armey, at Texas A& M.,
but he’s a scarce as that groundhog, Punxatawney Phil)Archbishop William’s
commendations of acceptance of Shariah
law, isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.