|
Grip it and rip it posted:What is a puppet master and puppet but a partnership between two members with wildly disproportionate ability and agency? Wait, so if two countries have an alliance and mutual goals one is automatically an puppet unless they are in the same weight class? That is a pretty bizarre outlook on international relations. Though I apparently live in a puppet state of a puppet state so what do I know.
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 17:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 16:45 |
|
|
Grip it and rip it posted:What is a puppet master and puppet but a partnership between two members with wildly disproportionate ability and agency? Nice meltdown though a puppet master very literally controls the movements of their puppets the relative power of the members is actually not relevant
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 18:26
|
|
|
Jasper Tin Neck posted:Could the Trans-Atlantic CIA conspiracy idiots just shut the gently caress up here? Go make your own thread on how America is the true evil empire. Unpleasant for sure but dunno this changes things, we knew they were going to be salafist in their justice system.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 19:16
|
|
|
In another blast from the past, the Taliban have banned beard trimming!
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2021 23:21
|
|
|
MH Knights posted:In another blast from the past, the Taliban have banned beard trimming! Man that’s crazy, we should spend trillions of dollars invading their country to liberate them from this insane oppression
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2021 05:07
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/SaeedShah/status/1442451434541309956?s=19 It's a very serious situation with a lot of bad poo poo happening that can't really be helped But the modern world still renders every facet absurd in some way
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2021 12:18
|
|
|
Ron Paul Atreides posted:https://twitter.com/SaeedShah/status/1442451434541309956?s=19 "Oh no Brian, I haven't been in an accident this bad since Afghanistan!"
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2021 12:55
|
|
|
I know I shouldn't wish for this because it will just lead to more civilian deaths, but drat it the idea of the Taliban rank and file rebelling because the leadership declares rollercoasters and bumper cars haram keeps me laughing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 07:46
|
|
|
FrenchBen posted:I know I shouldn't wish for this because it will just lead to more civilian deaths, but drat it the idea of the Taliban rank and file rebelling because the leadership declares rollercoasters and bumper cars haram keeps me laughing. It's a funny idea but also a genuine question, these young guns are not the hardliners who came up during the Soviet/Afghan war, and they don't have the same sensibilities or motivations. Hardliners are the leadership so they will set the tone for a while going forward but, assuming the whole thing doesn't collapse from trade drying up, its very hard to tell how this all hashes out. Old fuckers have to die eventually after all.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 15:38
|
|
|
I've been thinking on things, so I figured I'd put down the thoughts so people can tell me how wrong I am. Yeah, Afghanistan (and by extension, Iraq), was a huge mess made 10x worse by the usual fuckstains exploiting these sorts of things, but I honestly wonder if this wasn't the best of a bad lot of possibilities. Let's theorize a 2000 election that zagged somewhere where it zigged. Al Gore held out longer, or some ballots were more clear, or some disenfranchisement went wrong, or a Japanese sniper shot some Bush ballots instead, and Al Gore managed to tip over and become President instead. Assuming the House and Senate races remained more or less the same, that would give the Democrats control of the Senate and the Republicans the House. Then 9/11 still happens to some degree. Even if Gore paid more attention to warnings, there's no guarantee that that would have been enough. Maybe it would have been lessened, maybe the butterfly effect would have caused one thing to go wrong that would have unravelled the whole thing, but let's assume for the sake of argument we still had some bad poo poo go down in the tail end of 2001. People are all "They immediately began chomping at the bit to get us into Iraq, before anyone had any clue who had done this", and that's true, but I remember those days afterwards. People were PISSED. They didn't really care about all the fine, very cold details that this was pretty much chickens coming home to roost in a lot of ways, and all the factors about the collective American psychology and why 9/11 hurt so many so bad (primarily a mix of 'This doesn't happen here' and 'This doesn't happen to us', which is very self-centered. People constantly talk about how 9/11 just BROKE a lot of people, and it was probably made subconsciously worse by the fact that I'm sure that a lot of those people, somewhere deep down, recognized that we 'deserved it'). Millions upon millions wanted blood. It was pure tribalism and no one was in any position to make any of the masses listen to the fine details, any more than how irrational you yourself might become when you lose your temper. It could be assumed that Gore's government would be more low key. No Iraq invasion, heck, maybe not even an Afghanistan invasion, or maybe a small one where it was "Give us Bin Laden/No/We're going in then/He's not here, gently caress." and then they left, as they tried to follow the money (and likely smashed up against the horrible realpolitik of the Saudi Arabia factors). In essence, he'd be denying people 'their blood'. I basically wonder if, in the worse case scenarios of this hypothetical, the people would basically throw out the Democrats en masse in 2002 and Gore in 2004 to give it to someone who would give them the promised blood and death they wanted so bad. How long would the fiery need for vengeance simmer? The mess of Iraq let the air out of that balloon. Would people have calmed down by 2004? Or would they have just put in a John McCain, or hell, maybe even a Rudy Guiliani, because they'd have keep saying they would get those bastards, the democrats let them off and they won't, and having been left to let their rage fester for years, it would have caused an even worse end result, an even worse quagmire in the Middle East, hell, plenty of people were screaming about nuking the whole place into one big radioactive parking lot. Basically, in the highest view of things, I wonder if this was really one of the better ways this could have played out. But who knows, maybe I don't have a clue what I'm talking about, and since it's all hypotheticals, it's not like we could ever know for sure one way or the other. TL;DR: If Gore had been president and done things differently, would the American masses have calmed down in time or just gotten madder and reacted even worse on a political and global level? Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Sep 30, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 17:01
|
|
|
I feel like by 2004 the bloodlust would have abated to a substantial degree. I could still easily imagine a President Gore losing, the US was astonishingly conservative back then, but not invading Iraq would change -so much- about the aughts in America that prognosticating really starts to unspool once you go past 2003.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 17:18
|
|
|
Military intervention isn't unique to the republicans, and I doubt Al Gore of all people would have been able to break the wave of warhawks angling for invasions.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 17:45
|
|
|
As a general rule of thumb, no matter how mad people get at the time, transient political events like 9/11 do not have three years of staying power. GOP diehards might furiously milk the issue for years like they did Benghazi, but the actual political impact would be small by 2004. Besides, I think you're mistaken to assume there wouldn't be any bloodshed if Gore had been president. There probably wouldn't have been a whole-rear end Global War On Terror, but Dems were perfectly content with engaging in violence in the Middle East. The Clinton administration attacked Iraq with bombs and cruise-missiles several times over the course of the 90s, and a bill calling for official US support of regime change in Iraq passed the Senate by unanimous consent in the late 90s. It's fairly safe to assume that Gore would have blown some poo poo up in Afghanistan and maybe even Iraq as well.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 18:01
|
|
|
Neurolimal posted:Military intervention isn't unique to the republicans, and I doubt Al Gore of all people would have been able to break the wave of warhawks angling for invasions. After all, the Bush administration and its senior staff famously had very little interest in completing Bush Sr's invasion of Iraq. They just got carried away by a bloodthirsty media acting of its own volition. Right? I mean, I'm not saying that Gore would have done nothing militarily after 9/11, especially in Afghanistan. But full on invasions, especially to unrelated countries? The wave of warhawks angling for invasions in the real world was dominantly a bunch of neocons and was successful primarily because so many of them were in the White House and using every tool at their disposal to encourage the media and public to embrace war. "President Gore dropped some bombs on Iraq and sent some special forces into Afghanistan until he figured Bin Laden took off somewhere else" is a very different reality than the one we got. Edit: Hell, even "President Gore invaded Afghanistan just as hard as Bush did" can play much differently if six months later he's not more focused on the shiny of finally getting Saddam and all his oil to make Daddy proud. Killer robot fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Sep 30, 2021 |
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 18:08
|
|
|
Sorry if this goes against thread rules, I’ll take the probe or whatever. I’m trying to help an Afghan family apply for Humanitarian parole to the US while their visa applications complete. The head of the family briefly worked for the US as a translator, but is currently in danger because of him having a shop on a NATO controlled post in Kabul between 2015 and the fall of the city in August. His shop and home was looted and he’s currently bouncing from house to house, staying with various friends and family trying to avoid groups looking for collaborators or people that just did business with Coalition forces, so this is a time sensitive thing we’re trying to do. I’ve gotten pretty much everything they need together, but I’m still trying to find them someone willing to volunteer to make sure they will not become a public charge on coming to the US via an I-134 Form. I would do it, but I’m already sponsoring an Afghan family of 5 and I’m worried about taking on more before their parole application in approved. If this is something that you would consider doing then please send me a PM. More than ne person can do this and that would probably be preferred to spread out the load if the family actually needed help after arriving. There isn’t a guarantee that any financial help would be needed and the next step to having the parole package approved would be to get in contact with charities in the US to set up a place and means for the family to live so there is a good chance that they would have it covered. That said this is a signed form that will legally obligate you to provide financial support if needed so don’t volunteer if you aren’t sure you can afford it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 22:07
|
|
|
-Zydeco- posted:Sorry if this goes against thread rules, I’ll take the probe or whatever. This is pinned at the top of D&D front page, anybody who wants to help PM Zydeco.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2021 22:29
|
|
|
If Gore was president, maybe he would have done things like presented the evidence Bin Laden did 9-11 and negotiated with the Taliban.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2021 22:50
|
|
|
We definitely invade Afghanistan except this time it goes better because we don't let dipshits like David Drum alienate Iran again and we probably don't go into Iraq
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 00:08
|
|
|
Or maybe once he fucks off to Pakistan we stop hunting random people in Afghanistan in an ever lasting snype hunt except we kill whole families to justify our ongoing occupation as a staging ground for Iraq
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 00:13
|
|
|
I think president gore accepts the Taliban's deal to take Bin Laden but still bombs Afghanistan heavily.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 00:40
|
|
|
I genuinely think we don't go to Iraq tho. Like being serious, that was a Cheney/Bush Senior cadre idea
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 00:46
|
|
|
Gore is an ISI asset why would they bomb the two. Towers if he gets the presidency
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 01:02
|
|
|
Ron Paul Atreides posted:I genuinely think we don't go to Iraq tho. Like being serious, that was a Cheney/Bush Senior cadre idea Yeah our bloodlust had to be sated so there no way we don't go into Afghanistan but we probably avoid the hell of the Bush admin chomping at the bit for exploitation and wanton holy war in Iraq
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 02:28
|
|
|
No weird rivalry with Iran either, probably.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 10:12
|
|
|
eh the iran rivalry is almost institutionally hard baked into the american intel/military/foreign policy world, but yeah i agree that it wouldn't have had even 1/100th the teeth as it did under Bush. Iran was quite seriously sympathetic to the US following 9/11 and was legitimately trying to help US efforts against al-qaeda, but the US completely pissed that rapprochement away when Iran was declared part of the axis of evil and yeah gore would pretty invariably take the US into afghanistan, but I don't see how that would continue on into Iraq given how much that was the personal crusade of bush/cheney/rumsfeld/wolfowitz
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 10:22
|
|
|
Everything I read says that the war of Afghanistan was a huge failure, but here is my shoot-from-the-hip hot-take: from a Machiavellian/Geopolitical stance, the result of the US's occupation was a resounding success, because the US's two biggest global competitors, China and Russia, now have a massively destabilized country on their border. While China is publicly pretending like they are buddy-buddy with the Taliban, behind the scenes the CCP brass are likely pulling their hair out in negotiations with the Taliban. The Taliban are idealistic guerrilla warriors, and (imho) do not have what it takes to run a modern nation. Just the other day, I saw some news about how the Taliban are driving Pakistan up the wall. Pakistan was the Taliban's biggest supporter and China and Pakistan have close diplomatic ties. Everyone in the region is probably coming to the realization that they are going to be hamstrung and cleaning up the messes made by these idiots for a long time to come. Please keep in mind I have no idea what I am actually talking about.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 11:10
|
|
|
I mean since that was the status quo before the invasion, that's kind of like reinventing the wheel by constructing it solely from cash money. Hell, if you just wanted to intensify the civil war, you could have just given the Northern Alliance one hundredth of the funds spent.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 11:30
|
|
|
Chill Monster posted:Everything I read says that the war of Afghanistan was a huge failure, but here is my shoot-from-the-hip hot-take: from a Machiavellian/Geopolitical stance, the result of the US's occupation was a resounding success, because the US's two biggest global competitors, China and Russia, now have a massively destabilized country on their border. While China is publicly pretending like they are buddy-buddy with the Taliban, behind the scenes the CCP brass are likely pulling their hair out in negotiations with the Taliban. The Taliban are idealistic guerrilla warriors, and (imho) do not have what it takes to run a modern nation. Just the other day, I saw some news about how the Taliban are driving Pakistan up the wall. Pakistan was the Taliban's biggest supporter and China and Pakistan have close diplomatic ties. Everyone in the region is probably coming to the realization that they are going to be hamstrung and cleaning up the messes made by these idiots for a long time to come. I’d say there’s probably a massive difference between a border with Pakistan that’s thousands of miles long and drawn arbitrarily to over tribal and ethnic boundaries not particularly far from the country’s capital in Islamabad, and a border with China that consists of a handful of mountain passes. The border with Russia would probably be a bit more comparable, if we were still in the 20th century when Russia had a border with Afghanistan.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 13:10
|
|
|
Chill Monster posted:Everything I read says that the war of Afghanistan was a huge failure, but here is my shoot-from-the-hip hot-take: from a Machiavellian/Geopolitical stance, the result of the US's occupation was a resounding success, because the US's two biggest global competitors, China and Russia, now have a massively destabilized country on their border. While China is publicly pretending like they are buddy-buddy with the Taliban, behind the scenes the CCP brass are likely pulling their hair out in negotiations with the Taliban. The Taliban are idealistic guerrilla warriors, and (imho) do not have what it takes to run a modern nation. Just the other day, I saw some news about how the Taliban are driving Pakistan up the wall. Pakistan was the Taliban's biggest supporter and China and Pakistan have close diplomatic ties. Everyone in the region is probably coming to the realization that they are going to be hamstrung and cleaning up the messes made by these idiots for a long time to come. You should really look at a map of Afghanistan and the surrounding countries before coming out with hot takes like this. There are two or three massive countries between the Russian and Afghan borders, and the China-Afghanistan border is a tiny, inhospitable, mountainous strip of land. I don't think Russia or China have been inconvenienced by the vast effort the US put into destabilising Afghanistan. There really isn't a silver lining to the Afghan war cloud.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 13:27
|
|
|
Chill Monster posted:Everything I read says that the war of Afghanistan was a huge failure, but here is my shoot-from-the-hip hot-take: from a Machiavellian/Geopolitical stance, the result of the US's occupation was a resounding success, because the US's two biggest global competitors, China and Russia, now have a massively destabilized country on their border. While China is publicly pretending like they are buddy-buddy with the Taliban, behind the scenes the CCP brass are likely pulling their hair out in negotiations with the Taliban. The Taliban are idealistic guerrilla warriors, and (imho) do not have what it takes to run a modern nation. Just the other day, I saw some news about how the Taliban are driving Pakistan up the wall. Pakistan was the Taliban's biggest supporter and China and Pakistan have close diplomatic ties. Everyone in the region is probably coming to the realization that they are going to be hamstrung and cleaning up the messes made by these idiots for a long time to come. Russia does not share a border with Afghanistan at all and China's border with Afghanistan is less than 50 miles long and extremely remote.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 14:52
|
|
|
Also the Chinese/Afghan border is in Xinjiang, AKA the Uygur Autonomous Region, which as you might imagine already has a large amount of surveillance and military presence such that anyone trying to cross over there would be immediately shot or thrown back over the other side.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 16:43
|
|
|
Chill Monster posted:Everything I read says that the war of Afghanistan was a huge failure, but here is my shoot-from-the-hip hot-take: from a Machiavellian/Geopolitical stance, the result of the US's occupation was a resounding success, because the US's two biggest global competitors, China and Russia, now have a massively destabilized country on their border. While China is publicly pretending like they are buddy-buddy with the Taliban, behind the scenes the CCP brass are likely pulling their hair out in negotiations with the Taliban. The Taliban are idealistic guerrilla warriors, and (imho) do not have what it takes to run a modern nation. Just the other day, I saw some news about how the Taliban are driving Pakistan up the wall. Pakistan was the Taliban's biggest supporter and China and Pakistan have close diplomatic ties. Everyone in the region is probably coming to the realization that they are going to be hamstrung and cleaning up the messes made by these idiots for a long time to come. 10 years ago I might have agreed but the US spectacularly hosed it up in every theatre and right now, those ostensible rivals now have common points of interest leading them to cooperate and the coalition has been bleeding itself dry for 20 years. Whatever the strategy that was in mind at the outset, the end results are a total US pullback from the region. Somewhere along the line the plan stopped working
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 17:19
|
|
|
The plan was to establish US client states in Afghanistan and Iraq, invade Iran from three sides, and control the bulk of the world's oil reserves. This was a strategy probably composed in the 80s and modified on the fly. It's not going great.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 17:26
|
|
|
Ron Paul Atreides posted:I genuinely think we don't go to Iraq tho. Like being serious, that was a Cheney/Bush Senior cadre idea We probably would have launched some cruise missiles for like saddams support for the second intifada or something (assuming it still happens) but honestly yeah. Then again was saddam in best of health? His sons might have gotten into a nasty fight or succession but that's just speculation. Otherwise yeah 
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 17:33
|
|
|
I would put even odds on Saddam miscalculating and taking another pop at Kuwait at some point in the last 20 years. Possibly even more likely if he sees the US reaction to 9/11 being to drop a few bombs on Afghanistan and then rapidly stop caring and let the Taliban take the country back.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 17:56
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:I would put even odds on Saddam miscalculating and taking another pop at Kuwait at some point in the last 20 years. Possibly even more likely if he sees the US reaction to 9/11 being to drop a few bombs on Afghanistan and then rapidly stop caring and let the Taliban take the country back. maybe, but Iraq was still under sanctions and Saddam got burned real loving bad last time he thought he could trust the US to hang back and that was with the Bush Senior admin quietly winking at him that it would be fine before coming in to loving destroy him
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 18:05
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:I would put even odds on Saddam miscalculating and taking another pop at Kuwait at some point in the last 20 years. Possibly even more likely if he sees the US reaction to 9/11 being to drop a few bombs on Afghanistan and then rapidly stop caring and let the Taliban take the country back. e: double post
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 18:06
|
|
|
lol Saddam's attempt to invade Kuwait literally ended with Iraqi infrastructure being set back decades. He was not invading anything, if he had even made it this long.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 18:06
|
|
|
Ron Paul Atreides posted:maybe, but Iraq was still under sanctions and Saddam got burned real loving bad last time he thought he could trust the US to hang back and that was with the Bush Senior admin quietly winking at him that it would be fine before coming in to loving destroy him People genuinely need to understand the massive diplomatic failure that caused the Gulf War in the first place. I didn't even believe it for years until I saw a good blow by blow account of how he decided to invade Kuwait.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 18:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 16:45 |
|
|
Lawman 0 posted:People genuinely need to understand the massive diplomatic failure that caused the Gulf War in the first place. I didn't even believe it for years until I saw a good blow by blow account of how he decided to invade Kuwait. I'm personally of the opinion it was less a failure than a deliberate mismanagement to provoke causus belli for American entry. Saddam was a bad bad man but he wasn't random or unresponsive to outside pressure, especially American. Bush admin could've held him in check before the first jeep got on the road, they didn't though. But we also we telling the Kurds we'd support them before Halabja so... Modern US foreign policy is a lot of saying one thing and setting things in motion, then not following through
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2021 18:22
|
|