So it emerges that the Taliban don’t actually need Russian rubles to hate Americans and try to kill them for their freedom.
But who cares now.
This emerges three months after the original hoax and reached ~100x fewer people. Meanwhile, the important goals were accomplished. The neocons torpedoed plans to end the endless Middle East occupations and RussiaGate the series got a minor new subplot.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
The very idea that Taliban needs someone to pay it to kill occupiers of their country says one thing about those who came up with it: they are incredible idiots. It’s like saying that people need someone to pay them to entice them to breathe.
On the Slav-Muslim relations subject, it’s quite staggering how Trump has managed to completely cuck Serbia by getting them to normalise relations with Kosovo and basically de facto recognise them as a country, and also got them to move their embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Surely getting Serbia to agree to that must anger even a lot of his supporters, many of whom see Serbia/Kosovo as something of a “cause celebre”?
It’s always cheaper to buy elites than to buy the populace. This is true even in microscopic countries, like Montenegro, let alone in bigger ones, like Serbia. It works in any “democracy” that allows the elites to disregard the opinions of the populace.
Once upon a time, a polish degenerate went to Pakistan to give the taliban an “inspirational” speech. It involved mentioning “God”. If he was still alive today, I wonder whether he would claim that “God is still on their side” – this time while they are having some philosophical disagreements with the americans.
https://youtu.be/A9RCFZnWGE0
Afghanistan, where Empires go to die. Recorded for the last 2400 years and certainly occurring before that. It’s like invading Russia without winter gear.
Even winter gear won’t help. Bismarck figured it out more than a century ago. Both Napoleon before Bismarck and Hitler after Bismarck showed that marching on Moscow is a bad career move.
He didn’t get Serbia to recognize Kosovo, in fact, the deal seems to have had relatively little to do with Serbia at all, rather it seems like it was a bizarre attempt to get Serbia and Kosovo alike to sous Israel, which is indeed extremely embarrassing.
I also don’t know why you think Serbia would be a “cause celebre” for Trump supporters, I find this highly doubtful.
The Mongols pulled it off no problem.
There were no Taliban in Afghanistan in USSR times.
That meme surfaced recently in throwaway lines in the “news” …. “During USSR times, the Taliban…”. They came to the fore during the Clinton years, auto-assembling from the various Saudi/Pakistani/CIA efforts to create a “resistance”.
You are correct. In fact the Taliban were partially an American venture created with the Pakistani assistance to try to stabilize Afghanistan and checkmate the Iranian influence that was creeping in through the Tadjik Nothern Alliance.
Also, a pipeline bypassing Russia and Iran and potentially allowing exports to India and the Indo-Pacific was part of the ploy. Not really surprising. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
https://merip.org/1997/03/the-taliban-the-sharia-and-the-pipeline/
Some still believe in recycling this idea today.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-08/a-7-5-billion-pipeline-has-surprise-patrons-taliban-militants
The lack of clever ideas is a sign of dullness and the ad nauseam repetition of unfruitful ploys is a sign of mental rigidity. In this case we clearly have both…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eht0x37WAAEjp3W?format=jpg&
Serbia and Kosovo have not recognised each other – so no normalisation there.
Serbia has said that if Israel recognises Kosovo, Serbia will not move its embassy to Jerusalem. So no movement any time soon.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200910-serbia-will-not-move-embassy-to-jerusalem-if-israel-recognises-kosovos-independence/
True. But that happened >700 years ago.
The Mongols just devastated the country and moved on, as was their wont.
The Britsh sent 2 small expeditions to Afghanistan in the C19th. This revealed to them that there was nothing in Afghanistan worth having. So they built forts to prevent Afghan bandits raiding British India and undertook the odd punitive raid as reprisal.
Come the C20th and C21st and there’s still nothing in Afghanistan worth having. Yet the Soviets spent nearly 10 years in Afghanistan, and the Americans have spent nearly 20 years.
Latter day imperialists have one thing in common. They never learn from the experience of past empires.
Yep. Hegel was right: “What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
standard issue jewish propaganda bullshit, like most of the current ‘bombshell’ stories that always seem to come out 3 months before a national election.
and there will be a few more leading up to the election. ah, a new sexual assault allegation against Trump. a new lie that he said “screw the troops” when he thought he was talking in private. and so on and so forth.
this stuff is all a subset of the Intelligence War – the smartest living things on the planet are all trying to completely control the planet, and this largely explains their macro level behaviors.
It depends what example to learn from you pick.
For example, the Greeks ruled what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan for centuries, and were defeated by nomadic invasion from the steppe, not by locals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Bactrian_Kingdom
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Greco-BactrianKingdomMap.jpg/800px-Greco-BactrianKingdomMap.jpg
What were they doing right?
This has always puzzled me since I became aware of it many years ago. The Greco-Bactrian flourished for over 200 years and the Indo-Greek for over 300 years.
The new kingdom, highly urbanized and considered as one of the richest of the Orient (opulentissimum illud mille urbium Bactrianum imperium “The extremely prosperous Bactrian empire of the thousand cities” Justin, XLI,1 [8]), was to further grow in power and engage in territorial expansion to the east and the west:
My old Classics teacher used to say that it was because Afghanistan was much more civilised 2300 years ago than it is now. It was a part of the world that had actually regressed. He had actually visited Afghanistan several times in the 1960s and early 1970s, so he was speaking from experience.
Certainly, nobody today would claim Afghanistan is highly urbanised and rich. What went wrong. Repeated barbarian invasions and destruction of cities? Nomadism ? The intrusion of Islam and the extirpation of Buddhism ? Anything else ?
If any reader could recommend an informative book on the subject, I would be happy to know. And yes, what were the Greeks doing right ?