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Britain Wants A Rerun Of The War On Afghanistan
Immediately after the Taliban victory an enormous dis-information campaign was launched to again badmouth them.
There are now suddenly all kinds of allegations that the Taliban are doing this or that bad. These are mostly based on hearsay and no or very little evidence is presented. Don't believe them without direct confirmation from original sources.
The launch of Amrullah Saleh and Ahmed Massoud as leaders of a new resistance against the Taliban must have been long prepared. One does not get op-ed space in the Washington Post and several big European papers just some three days after Kabul falls without some lead time and without serious 'western' backing.
While Saleh is an old CIA spy Ahmed Massoud has been prepared by the Brits:
After finishing his secondary school education in Iran, Massoud spent a year on a military course at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.In 2012, he commenced an undergraduate degree in War Studies at King's College London where he obtained his bachelor's degree in 2015. He obtained his master's degree in International Politics from City, University of London in 2016.
The type of disinformation campaign combined with the well prepared launch of the 'resistance campaign', allegedly with SAS trained Afghan soldiers, and the regional op-ed placements let me conclude that he is run by the Brits. They are quite excellent in their 'strategic communication' disinformation business.
The conservatives speaking in their special parliament session were also the most angry about the outcome of their imperial war on Afghanistan and about their own inability to stop its end while claiming to be a 'Global Britain'.
As Richard Murphey remarks on Withering Britain:
This then is a massive moment for the role of the US in the world. It does not create a vacuum, but the risk that one might follow – which China will all too willingly seek to fill – seems very real at present.
And where does Britain fit into this? In a sense it does not. The US did not consults us, and is still not apparently telling us what it is doing in Kabul. We were not a player. There was no special, relationship. Our opinion was not worth having. It did not matter to the US. The pretence is over.
With that the vestige of British power, built on the coat-tails of the 1940s and the mutually advantageous myths formed since then, has gone. We are now just a rather remote, small, and fairly insignificant state who is just one amongst many. The delusion that we are otherwise has to go.
But will the delusion disappear? Will we, with its demise, stop building aircraft carriers that were strategically useless decades before they were designed? Will we stop thinking ourselves exceptional? And will an England thwarted become ever more aggressive towards its last vestiges of empire – those states it subjects to its rule within the supposed United Kingdom, which increasingly feels anything but that?
These are big questions. Only time can provide the answers. But I have a feeling that everything has changed. The image of British power has withered away. If all involved now deal with the reality for the these islands and their future that might be for the better. If at the same time we stop hectoring and abusing the world and actually learn to live with and work alongside it, so much the better too. But will we do that? That’s anyone’s guess. The wise will hope that we do.
That hope is, see above, in vain.
Stories about alleged Taliban acts 'against Afghan women' will now again get special features. Women have been used to sell the long war on Afghanistan since its very beginning. But how many women were actually killed by Soviet, British and U.S. bombs during the war?
On the abuse of feminism to promote the never ending war on Afghanistan, the badmouthing of the Taliban please read the excellent piece Afghanistan: The End of the Occupation which was co-written by a female anthropologist who has done field work there.
@204 JackRabbit
Interleaved below. Hopefully, you’ll circle back and see this, since you made the effort to lay out that lambasting.
🙂
…It’s strange how you ignore the more recent Presidents.
Tom: I ignored them because they didn’t make my list of presidents that weren’t totally co-opted by the elites that operate the country from behind the Oz curtain. I should have added President Carter, because I think he went off the reservation a time or two.
…Sanders was identified as a sheepdog by Black Agenda Report soon after he entered the Democratic Primary.
Tom: Doesn’t matter that much where and how he’s pigeon-holed or labelled, JackRabbit. I’m noticing that he moved the Overton window re: socialism. If Oz used him as a sheepdog, he may have extracted his due.
…Now you’re raising the bar, pretending that Kissinger has no influence if he can’t force change.
Tom: that is a fair criticism. My counter is that Kissinger got sent as an emissary because he may well be remembered fondly by the Chinese, for good and maybe not great reasons from the perspective of our country’s long-term interests. There’s no question he has influence, or, as you point out, he wouldn’t have been received by Xi.
How much influence is also a fair question. Do you agree that “how much” wasn’t “a lot”?
…And you’re re-writing history. Kissinger helped USA to out-maneuver Russia during the Cold War against Russia.
Tom: Fair point. He surely did. How good at chess was he, in retrospect? Kissinger was good as a diplomat. He was not, is not, and won’t be good at economic policy. And in the end, JackRabbit, economic policy is the trump card. (note to myself, right before posting: cultural policy, actually, may be even more important)
…China benefited, sure; but I have little doubt that they had plans to limit China’s ability to become a rival.
Tom: I have no doubt whatsoever that “they had plans to limit China”. Nor do I doubt that China had “no plans to be limited”. Kissinger set himself out as a scholar of history, as someone that knew the Chinese mind.
Well? How good a scholar was he, actually? A fair bit of what China did was right out of Sun Tzu. Warcraft 101.
For the benefit of other readers, as I’m sure you know this already JackRabbit, China presided over the most immense transfer of wealth, capacity and technology in all history, all without firing a single shot. We _shipped_ it to them. Kissinger & cabal front-and-center. Two double-handfuls of T-bills in return.
Mull that over for a while, all you elites. We’re supposed to revere you, correct?
…IMO USA expected Russia to capitulate in the 1990’s and join the West.
Tom: No doubt. How in the devil could they have anticipated Putin after Yelsin? That surprised the hell out of everyone, me included. Never thought that would happen. Russians deserve immense credit for their recovery.
…But the Empire asshats cruel ‘Shock Therapy’ made an enemy of Russia while at the same time, the asshats turned their attention to the Middle East.
Tom: Anndddd…that would have been right about the time the NeoCons showed up, right? We are _such_ suckers.
Who was it looted Russia?
JackRabbit, the reason I got involved in all this intn’l fuss is because I believe that the U.S. took a bad track with the repress-others strategy, when we should have pursued the “build us” track.
We’re clever enough to screw others up, and too stupid not to.
We define our foreign policy in terms of “what we did /could have done to them”. It’s a guess, but I think Russia and China probably view themselves as “What we did to build us”.
Yes, indeed I am being unfair by second-guessing in retrospect. Any child can do that.
But now – now we all have the benefit of that hindsight. I’m hoping that someone in Oz is using the feedback, latest being Afghanistan.
“Some of the best feedback you’ll ever get, Tom, comes in packages that ain’t no fun to open”.
I’ll close by thanking you for the exchange, JackRabbit. You made me think, and contest my own ideas.
Posted by: Tom Pfotzer | Aug 22 2021 3:01 utc | 206
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