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Re: Mona Charen assumes my position

By: Cactus Flower in ALEA | Recommend this post (0)
Thu, 26 Aug 21 3:31 AM | 27 view(s)
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Msg. 43234 of 54959
(This msg. is a reply to 43233 by Cactus Flower)

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Hey, who the heck is Mona Charen? Apparently she is my twin! We hold the same opinions. Here's another article. [Hurray, that means I don't have to think for myself any more!]

"The war in Afghanistan was not an American operation, but a NATO one. Out of the 3,500 non-Afghans killed, about one-third came from non-American nations, almost exclusively NATO members. (Other non-NATO countries—some treaty allies of the United States, some not, also deployed to Afghanistan—and their contributions are no less significant.)

Although NATO has been in existence since 1949, it didn’t invoke its mutual defense clause until after 9/11, at the behest of the United States. The unanimous vote by the member-states to join the American invasion of Afghanistan belies the objections some of them raised at the time. Two days after the attacks, member-state ambassadors attended a meeting to discuss triggering the mutual defense clause. The British secretary general of NATO, Lord Robertson, twisted the allies’ arms on behalf of the United States. According to someone present at the meeting, Robertson told the assembled diplomats, “If you ever want the Americans to come to your aid, you better fucking vote for this.” It did the trick, and every NATO member-state fought by our side, bled with us, and died with us for 20 years.

That was noble. But while we insisted on going in together, we insisted on getting out alone. This was ugly Americanism. President Barack Obama released Taliban leaders from prison so he and Secretary of State John Kerry could negotiate a peace agreement with them. They ran out of time, but their successors, Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo, eagerly carried on their work—though with even less competence."

http://www.thebulwark.com/biden-brings-back-the-ugly-american/




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The above is a reply to the following message:
Mona Charen assumes my position
By: Cactus Flower
in ALEA
Thu, 26 Aug 21 3:13 AM
Msg. 43233 of 54959

Nation-building was not the reason we were in Afghanistan and it's a straw man argument to suggest we were. We had selfish goals, and were not the worse for it. We were there to remove Afghanistan as a terror safe haven. Building a better Afghanistan was the cherry, not the cake.

"President Biden says we were there to punish the Taliban for 9/11 and to get bin Laden. Mission accomplished. Time to leave. President Trump thought the same. But the U.S. presence was doing far more than providing the conditions for girls to be educated, minorities to be free of persecution, and all to live in a non-medieval state. The troops were also preventing Afghanistan from reverting to being a base for al Qaeda. The terror group that attacked us on 9/11 has been set back for 20 years, but the triumphant return of the Taliban will prove a boon. Blood-thirsty jihadists from around the world will flock to Afghanistan and many others will be lifted by the example of the Islamists who defeated the Great Satan....

Americans should be proud that while we were there, as Jonathan Rauch pointed out, Afghanistan’s infant mortality rate dropped by 50 percent and life expectancy increased by six years. University graduates increased from 31,000 to nearly 200,000. And women were able to attend school, venture outside without covering, and participate in life. But that wasn’t the main reason we were there. The chief accomplishment of our Afghanistan deployment was to prevent another 9/11-style attack on the United States—and we did.

So we don’t need to beat our breasts about how misguided it was to suppose that we could transform a tribal society into a liberal democracy. Any movement in that direction was a bonus, but it wasn’t the chief goal. We were there to thwart attacks by terrorists who mean us grave harm. For 20 years, we succeeded. The future is now assuredly wretched for Afghans. And it is less safe for us. That’s not the voice of a disillusioned democracy-spreader, but a hard-headed realist."

http://twitter.com/monacharen


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