Yeah, you will keep making me laugh. Observations of facts are facts, not accusations.
Well, then it should be easy to find all these times I've made stuff up, then. Unless you're lying, of course.
Read, it does a body good.
How would you know?
Calm down, joe. You don't have the context of my comments, apparently, since you couldn't locate it when I asked you to. When did I ever mention Libya? And in what
context did Syria come up? You know what context is, right? It'd be pretty hard to put the label of "bullshit" on it if you'd bothered to check that out.
I'll explain it to you again: the difference between a system of warlords and a military republic in this context is irrelevant. It's like saying 'well, the one is further west of Israel, and the other is East of it, so you're fucking
wrong, Geoff!' You're talking about bribing a
warlord - your term - to keep a lid on the Islamists in Afghanistan. Well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but this is a major part of the popular grievances cited during the revolutions in Egypt, in Bahrain, hell, in
Saudi Arabia, in Iran during the Shah years. It's cited by Islamists (Sam comes to mind) who decry Islamic hegemony in several other nations: Jordan, Turkey. Bribing these nations to keep the pot from boiling is almost exactly the same thing as what you're describing. It isn't rendered different because the Afghans have had warlords for a couple decades - the corruption of the Afghan warlords is one of the reasons the Afghans supported the Taliban. But you - and the Dems, whoa - are proposing the same thing. It's not going to work, and the historical record -
in the same country, mind - shows that. Do you see what I'm saying here? Come on, this isn't a tricky one. Don't slap other unrelated arguments on it to scrabble a point together.
You are back to those fallacious arguments again. The US didn’t start the Arab Spring began in Syria long before the US began providing weapons to the rebels…minor details again. And the US did not bribe warlords in Syria…which is after all the context in which you raise the Arab Spring and Syria. So what we have here is a mindless dump on you part in order to obfuscate.
Again,
context, joey. I didn't make those comparisons in that
context. You're trying to drag everything into a big "Syria bag" in order to deny the events behind the Arab Spring in several of the nations in which it occurred. When I brought Syria into it - and I see you've dropped Libya, which I hope means you dialed in to the fact that I didn't use them as an example - I was talking about the US supplying arms to the Islamist rebel bloc there, not US support of Syria prior to then. It was a Soviet client for frigging years, joe, which I think everyone knows. I sure as hell did. What's the point of this line?
Ok, where is your evidence to support your claim that Egypt is a fledging religious dictatorship? Like all of your other claims, you have absolutely zero evidence to support that notion. The fact that people are protesting in the streets shows that it is not a dictatorship.
Holy shit:
no, you moron, people protesting in the street shows that it
is a fledgling (not "fledging") religious dictatorship. Otherwise
they wouldn't be out on the street, would they?
Just because it has a leader with a strong religious bent, it does not follow that it is a dictatorship.
I said
fledgling. Now you're pretending it's all the way gone. And you make the same mistake with Turkey. Read the papers much, Joe? Nor does it have much to do with whether Morsi is obeying the law. He's turning the nation into a neo-theocracy. Do you understand the difference?
Per my previous posts, the US has been providing military aid to Egypt for years now. That is not the same thing as paying for protection and bribing warlords
It's precisely the same thing on a different scale. Do you really not get this or are you pretending not to?
We are not talking about the latter part of the 20th century. We are talking about Afghanistan…one of them minor details again. You are trying to obfuscate again. Please keep a lid on your biases and stick to the topic under discussion.
It's not biased to point out that US policy has largely had sex with its own arse in the last few decades, and particularly so in the ME. Now: you asked me "Why? Where is your rationale, where is your evidence? [for making such a statement]" and I pointed the above out to you. Joe, I can't keep dragging you back to the discussion. You have to read and remember what's been written before. Otherwise this isn't going to work. Do you
really feel that the errors of American policy in the latter part of the 20th century has
no bearing on the outcome of this new plan?
Really? Because if your answer is 'yes', you need a serious refresher course in logic and consequence.
And I will repeat myself again. I am repeating my challenge, if you don’t like US policy in Afghanistan, what would you do? This time leave the ad hominem and the obfuscation out if it.
Don't know what you're referring to about
ad hominem (it's not ad hom to point out the flaws in another's logical process) but again: front some money and we'll talk. I get paid for my work, and finding a solution that would help the US out of the shit-jam it's got itself into over yonder qualifies as
work. Sorry, chief. Had enough ideas stolen over my life. You pay to play.
Most of the rest of your post is intellectual disjunct:
The discussion here was about Egypt, not the Taliban. The Taliban does not exist in Egypt.
Uh, no shit.
Please pay attention; I get tired of repeating myself. You like to ignore facts you don’t like as if they might magically disappear. George II’s policy of bribing local warlords worked well until he discontinued the practice and tried to modernize the country and implement a western style government. That is why the US has reverted to bribing warlords.
I thought you said before they were going to the bribes because making war on the Taliban was too expensive. Now it's Westernization - which Afghans had no problem with before 1980. Doesn't this suggest other factors?
If it is authoritatively wrong as you claim, then where is the authority? Who is the authority?
Historyis the authority of that little fact. You claimed warlords is how the country has
always worked. You sort of left out the part from 1920-1980, when it authoritatively
didn't work like that. Are you really this stupid? See, this is what I'm talking about also: you rope-a-dope on a phrase that you didn't read and don't understand, and ask for constant clarification of that which is clear to most literates.
No it is not strange at all. Americans kicked the shit out of Germany, Italy and Japan too. And now they are our best friends. Just because we were once enemies, it does not follow that we must always be enemies. This is something I learned in first grade.
Well, now that you're in second grade, I'm curious to know what this has to do with the discussion we're having here. I was asking about the US going after the wrong people, again, which was a political joke that you have turned into... actually I have no idea what you've turned it into. Digression, again? Or did they extract your sense of humour in kindergarten? That might explain it. Oh, and by the way, the
Soviets did in the Germans. You were completely irrelevant in that theatre.
Is there a point to that? I obviously know more than you my friend.
You don't seem to know that Afghanistan wasn't ruled by warlords for about half of the 20th century. So my suspicion is that you're just another party hack, and that you don't know too much, which is why you're holding up the flag for this shitboat of an exit policy.
Apparently I know more than you. Egypt was declared a republic in 1953. I suggest you look up the definition of republic while you are at it.
That's some fascinating name-looking-up, joe. Good job. Joe, have you heard of the Muslim Brotherhood?
Don’t look now but your anti-American underwear is showing; American hegemony had nothing to do with the Arab Spring.
So you don't know too much about it then. You also contradicted yourself from above:
joe said:
On the contrary, I think it is you who have consistently missed the point and the facts. You seem to think that the sole reason for the Arab Spring was government corruption. When in fact there were many reasons for the Arab Spring, chief among them was autocratic rule coupled with an educated population and a developing economy.
So you went from "not the sole reason" to "not a factor". Changing benchposts.
Let me bring you back to the discussion here. The issue is corruption and that it is the normal course of business in Afghanistan, and your assertion that corruption (i.e. bribes) won’t work in Afghanistan when in fact it has worked. You attempted to claim the Taliban was not corrupt, when in fact it is.
You just lied. Check the thread. Find where I said they weren't corrupt.
Let’s put this into context, this is what I wrote, “So in your reality, when the Taliban takes bribes from al-Qaeda for protection, it is not a bribe and it’s not corruption. But if the Taliban or other Afghani warlords take money from the US for similar purposes it is bribery and corruption?”
Let's put this into actual context: I had no truck whatsoever with your ass-headed attempted parallel, without even getting into the
kind of corruption each side illustrates and what that means to the public and, therefore, public support. But by all means, keep having this conversation with yourself.
You had held up the Taliban as a paragon of religious virtue. By bet is you didn’t know the Taliban takes bribes. You didn’t know as much about Afghanistan as you
I laughed when I read this one. Yes, a
paragon of religious virtue, sure. That's absolutely what I was saying.
I wrote, your assertion that Afghanistan was not always “under this miasma of darkness” was not relevant. Because it is not, what is relevant is the Afghanistan of this century.
Not until the people that saw that better Afghanistan are dead, no, it isn't. Why are you such a moral coward on this issue? More run and cover? Jesus, I'm starting to respect the
Republican platform a little more reading this crap, so you know it is not selling well.
Do you really think Americans are loved or appreciated by the Afghanis for trying to rebuild the country? I suppose that explains all of the IED’s.
Situation's a
bit more complex than that, joe. You have to stop thinking in this binary contrast kind of way. It's hurting your nation. Bad.
Uh, you had claimed that US intentions were not clear. And that clearly is not the case. A quick Google search disproves that notion.
And where am I supposed to have said
this? Let's see if you can find that cat in the coalhouse.
This is your responses to my question? I asked you if you didn’t like US policy in the region, which you apparently don’t, what policies would you like? What would you like the US to do in the region? And this is your answer?
Yeah. Knowledge isn't free, joe. I charge for it. I'd be honestly happy to share my ideas: dead honest. You call up your district head or what have you, have them cut me a check, and I will genuinely study that shit and come up with a reasonable alternative. Hell, I might even back the Obama Administration on this one if that's where the evidence goes, although I doubt it.
I think this discussion clearly does not support any of your contentions. Unfortunately, you have only been able to project your insecurities and attempt to mask your lack of knowledge and reasoning skills with a barrage of fallacies.
Yeah, but this is your classic run-and-cover approach, joe: 'you don't know nothing', 'you's using
faaaallacies', 'you's masking stuff', and so on. This is what you do when you bump up against reasonable counter-propositions: duck and cover while claiming your opponent don't know a-nothin'. It doesn't wash. If you want to discuss the issue, discuss it. You don't need to play turtle.
