Thank you brother.

I've been trying to get @unenlightened to join a Masonic lodge. He says it's too 'psychological'.

@Baden , would you ban a freemason?

Eating a pig is atrocious.

Does it sound pragmatist or logical positivist as phrased in the OP?

Sartre never made sense to me when confronted with the discrepancy between the look of the other or what is called modernly in cognitive science as an 'appraisal' and the resulting behavior from it.

That could just be a bad reading of why someone would peek on a woman while she is dressing, a French thing I suppose.

You could say that's how America felt about going it alone with Afghanistan after everyone pulled out.

CIA funded all groups to fight the Soviets. The money went basically through Pakistani ISI and they favored their guys. When Soviet Union withdrew and finally the Najibullah regime fell, the US lost interest at Afghanistan. The various warlords then started to fight each other, and finally Pakistan solved the dilemma by backing on group, "the students" lead by Mullah Omar. — ssu

Yep

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

I was under the impression that the CIA backed the mujahedeen to battle the Soviets that then became the Taliban. Is this true of Brzezinski's idea?

Americans are too fucking stupid and barbarous to imagine they would have done otherwise. — StreetlightX

It's really faux pas that you mention this with respect to a war waged with the Taliban, who behead, execute, and punish due to tribalism and barbarism.

Much of which has been ongoing since they took over Kabul as of recent.

So, your argument is basically that Afghanistan should have never been invaded? Of course this is some fantasy argument, you realize?

I can't fathom what a civil war would have looked like.

Was this chain of events preferable?

It's all a wallowing of sorts.

There are a lot of executions ongoing in Afghanistan...

So, the Taliban are going to be involved in meth trafficking apart from opium and weed. :death:

:eyes:

On Vice? Link please.

I think the Taliban is like organized crime. They control the traffic of heroine and meth, right? — frank

There's no meth in Afghanistan; but, plenty of poppy and weed.

So, the question is, who's to blame?

Well, here are the facts as far as I can tell:
1. Trump signed a deal with the Taliban.
2. Biden upheld it.
3. Evacuations were ongoing.
4. Taliban decide on taking over the country.

Whatever 5 or 5.1 or 6 are, we don't really know, but the justifications from the US will be that it was in the hands of the Afghan military (whatever that is) and a feeble and weak president of Afghanistan that both simply gave up and ran away.

I suppose you don't live in the US or watch CNN and Fox News...

Benghazi was all you could hear during 2013 from Fox News and even CNN. Then there were the investigations and testimonies, and reports. Etc.

He was with Obama as VP for 8 years, so not much excuses.

Luckily another Benghazi didn't happen which would have legitimized house investigations, testimony, and pander from republicans. Yada yada

Madness

The way the Afghan government fell with the inertial political mass, enables talk about the failure of America in Afghanistan.

Obviously Biden will be smeared as much as possible by all of his critics.

Fortunately another potential Benghazi didn't happen. :eyes:

c) Overthrowing the Taleban and installing the Northern Alliance looked to be a great idea. The rapid collapse of the Taleban then was similar what we have seen now, actually, hence this wasn't a bad thought. — ssu

Interesting. I wonder if the NA was weary of fighting themselves after seeing what the US was able to do with the Taleban.

Nothing in that speech includes the Taleban as the main threat. In fact you omitted to mention that since the US invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban have participated in peace talks with the US behind closed doors with the Afghan government.

In your years of observing the issue, how else would you would have dealt with Afghanistan?

So why invade and occupy Afghanistan? — ssu

The reasons were valid at the time. Pakistan was funding training for the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Hasn't that been dealt with or has the Taleban made statements that they aren't in it together with Pakistan anymore?

I mean, I can't fathom Afghanistan turning out again to be a breeding ground for jihadism.

Doesn't this all depend on Pakistan?

As I said earlier, it was and is the insane idea of "occupying a country, because it otherwise would possibly be a safe have for terrorists". That is the "operational directive", objective. And if you don't understand just how insane that idea is, then there you are. — ssu

I'm not really following you here. If the objective was to take down Bin Laden, then that was done in Pakistan, not in Afghanistan, where the US was.

Again, by most measures the Afghan war was won. The goal was never to defeat the Taleban, and if the Taleban turn out to prepare jihad against the US, then it seems that, that would be a reason to see it as a disaster.

To be fair, what were the operational directives of Afghanistan. If we treat the issue as purely definitional, I think final conclusions can be made about the war in Afghanistan.

In another thread I said that Iraq was a victory, according to what was intended to be the outcome of overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

To win over the population in the Middle East isn't something that can be achieved militarily and is beyond the scope of achieving by war effort, which people often associate as some goal of winning a war, which never transpired in Vietnam, and will never transpire in Afghanistan, apart from the people already seeking refugee status from there.

Afghanistan is reputed to have vast mineral resources--minerals important in the current economy. Why hasn't some nation -- us, Russia, Pakistan, or Afghanistan started mining these riches? Such a move would have helped Afghanistan (under the best of circumstances) become richer. They might still be medieval fanatics, but at least they'd have a pot to piss — Bitter Crank

It's only been lithium for Afghanistan in mountains.

Try and build a road that won't get blown up...

What's NATO going to do, now?

Nothing much?

Above all, put Finnish politicians in charge of US policy with US capabilities and then they will likely start thinking as their American counterparts. — ssu

This is a very strange thing to say in my opinion. If I'm not mistaken Finland would invite the UN peacekeepers along with diverting much more interest to the established UN in force.

It's almost as if Finland was a Republican member of the EU, and not Norway of Scandinavian countries.

While I appreciate arguments against nuclear power, like the fact that they occasionally explode... — Xtrix

But that'll require, above all, rehabilitating its reputation. — Xtrix

It only took Chernobyl (actually exploded), Three Mile Island, and Fukushima to do it. I tell you there's something psychological about nuclear that commands human irrationality...

But, when you do the research, how many people have actually died from nuclear power?

Mathematics, it seems, is a constellation of formal syntaxes which, in part, is useful for consistently map-making (re: coherence) and thereby mapping (the) territory with precision (re: correspondance). — 180 Proof

What is map-making and why do you call it "coherence"?

Being said, what'll probably happen is that we'll transition to nuclear power for electricity, whilst continuing to develop other clean and renewable energy sources. That's, of course, assuming that even those things happen. If they do, molten salt and Thorium reactors would be preferable.

I still think that we ought to be developing technologies currently and seek to move beyond nuclear power eventually, though. — thewonder

With regards to this thought, we are desperately in need of alternate sources for base power that can substitute for existing gas and oil power plants. Wind is a contender; but, the US spends a miniscule amount on wind as it is, while the EU went solidly with wind.

The real contender is fusion, but it's still a far away goal as it is. The only substitute that doesn't need huge investment in storing electricity is still nuclear. For some reason this doesn't get mentioned enough that power actually needs to be replaced, not created out of thin air. Bad'tch, another wind power reference

So, logicism became linguistic with the advent of the linguistic turn? Do you think this was a reification of thought-through-syntax in mathematics?

Yeah, we went a certain direction with nuclear in the 50's, and this was a conscious choice for the attainment of weapons grade material. Whilst there are already demonstrated molten salt reactors with a 0% chance of meltdown... It's literally melted down, get it? Bad'tish.

And then there is the chance event of nuclear fuel escaping a nuclear power plant seems so farfetched, yet is taken sooooo seriously, that essentially you negate a positive future for hundreds of millions of people by fear alone.

Go figure.

Batshittery I tell ya.

It seems to me that abandoning nuclear power altogether and investing in greener technologies is the only real way forward. — thewonder

That's not how it works out in practice in my opinion. 'Green' technology simply cannot compete with nuclear in certain domains that are essential to shifting from fossil fuels. Nuclear pretty much beats green technology on levelized cost of exploitation. A multi-gigawatt nuclear power station will last some 50+ years and requires little maintenance rather than fuel exchange.

Wind is pretty significant in my opinion, yet, still nuclear wins out most of the time.

Try and build a gigawatt solar farm for example or a gigawatt wind farm.

Reality consists of things and relations between them. — litewave

So, mathematics best describes these relationships? I would agree. Yet, what's mathematical about hydrogen? Is it a 'thing', as you might say?

It's interesting to note that the cool and level headed Germans decided to abandon nuclear, while Japan followed suit.

France on the other hand doesn't have much to worry about and exports it's power to the EU.

Oil and gas effectively killed nuclear with hype and batshittery in the US with fear and paranoia.

I sure do hope molten salt new nuclear reactors or Thorium reactors make a comeback, because I don't see hydrogen replacing petroleum or solar satisfying demand in the near future.

Oh, yeah, fusion is always 50 years away, blah blah blah.