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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2962 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 20, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Quite frankly, political rights are not as important as institutionalized rape of children. Under the old regime they barely had any meaningful political rights anyway, everything was so corrupt. What is the point of voting on which brigand runs the country? And who cares if Freedom House's index of political rights falls 17 points from 27 to 10? Would you rather live in 'unfree' China or 'free' Ghana?

Furthermore, I cited two tweets showing primary sources where General McNeil says he was not given any clear strategy on what he was supposed to do. This is obviously relevant to my claim that the US did not know what its goals were. If they knew what they wanted in a specific concrete sense, somebody would have told McNeil. There would have been some kind of strategic plan to win the war. If you disagree, please explain rather than saying 'those Hanania tweets do not say what you think they do'.

The Freedom House rating includes both civil liberties and political rights, so I don't know why you are only talking about political rights. I find it a bit disingenuous.

As for General McNeil, the tweet quotes him as saying that he was given "little strategic guidance." That is a far cry from saying that he was unaware that the basic goal of the war was to support the current government, keep the Taliban out of power, etc. The idea that, because he said he got little strategic guidance, therefore "we [can't] say that we have a better understanding of what the war was officially about" is just silly.

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