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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   10440 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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Two National Guardsman shot in DC.

Situation is still developing... conflicting reports about deaths. Trump has already requested 500 more guardsmen to be deployed in the capital. I'm afraid that any commentary on my part will be pure speculation: I'll edit this OP as more information comes to light. Apologies for the shortness of this initial post.

I would expect ICE to be shot at, especially during active operations: but the National Guard? They're literally doing nothing but stand around. They're dads and uncles pulling overtime shifts away from their real jobs, not stormtroopers. I'm highly suspecting some sort of mental illness or dumb radicalization, but I'll refrain on coming to conclusions for now.

Edit 1: Suspect has been identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a Afghan national evacuated back in 2021.

Edit 2: Speculatively, a linkedin profile of the same name seems to point him as being connected to a bunch of American NGOs. I'm always skeptical of these - the world is big enough for strangers to have the same names - but the face on the profile seems to match the suspect.

Or perhaps I don't have an eye for Afghans, and they all look the same to me.

Afghan national

We now have a new addition to the list embarrassingly wrong Scott Alexander quotes:

Many Afghans had collaborated with the Americans, eg as translators, in exchange for a promise of US citizenship. As the Taliban advanced, they called in the promise, begging to be allowed to flee to America before they got punished as traitors. The article focused on a heroic effort by certain immigration bureaucrats, who worked around the clock with minimal sleep for the last few weeks before Kabul fell, trying to get the citizenship forms filled in and approved for as many translators as possible. It made an impression on me because nobody was opposed to the translators getting citizenship, and the bureaucrats were themselves the people in charge of approving citizenship applications, so what exactly was forcing them to go to such desperate lengths?

How is that wrong?

The Afghan 'collaborators' were often drug-ridden, totally undisciplined, shamelessly corrupt, traitors and/or child rapists. These are the guys who gave us green-on-blue attacks. That's why the combined power of the US bloc lost to semi-literate goat-herders, the people we were allied with were in many respects worse than the Taliban and commanded less legitimacy among the population.

Plus the average Afghan refugee in the West is one of the most rapey and ill-mannered refugees.

Are we talking about the translators who were embeded with and beloved by US military units or the local warlords who got the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" treatment?

The program was not limited to translators, and Scott acknowledges that with "eg as translators". Anyone who worked for the American or coalition forces for at least 12 months can get a special immigrant visa.

Even steelmanning your argument though, why would we grant citizenship to someone willing to sell out their country to an invading power for a paycheck? When they swear their oath of citizenship to the United States, promising to bear arms on behalf of the US when required by law, and support and defend the Constitution, why would we believe them?

Even steelmanning your argument though, why would we grant citizenship to someone willing to sell out their country to an invading power for a paycheck?

Because the Taliban isn't "their country", it is just a group of thugs even if it is located in their country. You wouldn't ask why someone in a place run by the Mafia, or a Jew in Nazi Germany, would sell out "their country".

If they are doing it only for the money, sure, but if they are doing it for other reasons, they still need to eat.

There is a line in the sand for collaborating with a foreign invader to depose your government and occupy your country, which comes with unavoidable mass murder and atrocities. For Afghanistan, the death toll is estimated at around 200,000, along with the displacement of millions. The government actively trying to genocide you certainly crosses that line. The government enforcing a strict interpretation of Islamic law? That's a lot more questionable. Even a shitty government is often better than a foreign occupation and a low-intensity insurgency. Collaborating means obtaining a personal benefit from and enabling a process that imposes mass suffering on one's countrymen. I think the willingness to do so should be considered an anti-signal when it comes to citizenship, and certainly not an automatic qualification.

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