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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI Blame Afghanistan Not TFG Bush Or Biden
All the bribes, military, and other help, and good wishes in the world barely moved their cultural needle.
Power Craving Religious Fundamentalist Psychopaths are the planet's curse.
History repeats.
History repeats.......
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I Blame Afghanistan Not TFG Bush Or Biden (Original Post)
DanieRains
Aug 2021
OP
JI7
(89,241 posts)1. Yes, we are just avoiding the real problem by leaving out things like
culture . Especially religion.
As a contrast look at Vietnam .
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,708 posts)2. The Vietnamese love us now
I still think we could have co-opted them
roamer65
(36,744 posts)6. The Vietnamese are very anti-Chinese.
They see us as a potential ally in the South China Sea.
They had a border war with China in 1979 after they invaded Cambodia to get rid of Pol Pot.
China loved Pol Pot.
PortTack
(32,715 posts)3. Spot on! They don't want to change..sure they liked all the freedom and money but were
Unwilling to fight for it.
kacekwl
(7,014 posts)7. Sadly but expected was the money and
humanitarian aid never reached the citizens unless you were a corrupt opium grower. Most Afghan people never saw freedom or money.
David__77
(23,335 posts)4. Why do you need to blame?
Is it all that tidy?
stillcool
(32,626 posts)5. sometimes history doesn't repeat
who knows?
Afghanistan, 1979-92:
Everyone knows of the unbelievable repression of women in Afghanistan, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, even before the Taliban. But how many people know that during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the incredibly backward nation into the 20th century, including giving women equal rights? What happened, however, is that the United States poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war against this government, simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union. Prior to this, CIA operations had knowingly increased the probability of a Soviet intervention, which is what occurred. In the end, the United States won, and the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population.
https://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html
Everyone knows of the unbelievable repression of women in Afghanistan, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, even before the Taliban. But how many people know that during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the incredibly backward nation into the 20th century, including giving women equal rights? What happened, however, is that the United States poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war against this government, simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union. Prior to this, CIA operations had knowingly increased the probability of a Soviet intervention, which is what occurred. In the end, the United States won, and the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population.
https://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html
A Brief History of U.S. Interventions:
1945 to the Present
by William Blum
Z magazine , June 1999
Following its bombing of Iraq in 1991, the United States wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Following its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia.
Following its bombing of Afghanistan in 2001-2, the United States wound up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti.
Following its bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States wound up with Iraq.
This is not very subtle foreign policy. Certainly not covert. The men who run the American Empire are not easily embarrassed.
And that is the way the empire grows-a base in every neighborhood, ready to be mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. Fifty-eight years after world War II ended, the United States still has major bases in Germany and Japan; fifty ears after the end of the Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces continue to be stationed in South Korea.
"America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before," US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared in February 2002. Later that year, the US Defense Department announced: "The United States Military is currently deployed to more locations then it has been throughout history."
Equally unsubtle are the announcements beginning in the early 1990s-coinciding with he pivotal demise of the Soviet Union-and continuing to the present, trumpeting Washington's desire, means, and intention for world domination, while assuring the world of the noble purposes behind this crusade. These declarations have been regularly put forth in policy papers emanating from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as from government-appointed commissions and think tanks closely associated with the national security establishment.