Comment on Anon questions some decisions
ahornsirup@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Not that the 20 year occupation of Afghanistan wasn’t an absolute clusterfuck, but the Taliban were harbouring Al-Qaida leadership. To say otherwise is just denying historical facts.
ignoring context and facts is a big part of the over simplified ‘usa is evil’ narrative that many here are hopelessly wedding to.
the concept that international politics is about power… and not morality is really beyond most of the moralizing lemmites who seem to think somehow if they were in charge everything would be peace and harmony. or china and russian aren’t also imperialistic powers.
True. What’s also true, and adds context to the clusterfuck, is that the Taliban wouldn’t exist if thr US didn’t fund and arm extremists 50 years ago in order to prevent the spread of communism in Afghanistan.
DandomRude@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Oh, hey, yes, you’re right, there’s that too: the US also invented the concept of the “war on terror”, which has now been adopted by Israel, for example, to justify the genocide of the Palestinians. It’s really handy when you can just “excuse” the cold-blooded murder of thousands upon thousands of civilians with the argument that they are all supposedly terrorists. All you have to do is say, hey, they’re harboring terrorists, so let’s kill them all, including the women and children - the more we kill, the better, because once they grow up, they’ll all be terrorists.
ahornsirup@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here? That we should deny inconvenient facts because they don’t fit simple black-and-white narratives? The War on Terror spawning countless atrocities against civilians doesn’t retroactively justify 9/11 or sheltering those responsible for it.
DandomRude@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The glaring inconsistency lies in the fact that terrorists are not states against which one can wage war. This means that there are no regular armies fighting each other, but only one (usually vastly superior) army that arbitrarily decides which targets to attack and who to kill, which is not warfare, but the killing of arbitrary targets with arbitrary justification. This fundamentally flawed thinking was normalized during the occupation of Afghanistan under this pretext. It means nothing more than the right of the stronger party to do whatever it wants because it is supposedly fighting evil, which does not wear uniforms but hides among the civilian population, who are thus always under general suspicion of also being terrorists.
You say it’s okay when the US does it, but when anyone else does it, it’s an atrocity? You also say that the extreme disproportion between the victims of such an asymmetrical conflict would be acceptable. You do realize that Russia is justifying its invasion of Ukraine in the same way, right? And you really don’t see how absurd that is?
The only thing that could possibly top that is claiming that a country has weapons of mass destruction in order to destroy it, even though that country has no weapons of mass destruction at all - remember that US invasion? What I’m getting at is this: finding reasons for war that obscure the true intentions and coming up with justifications for extremely brutal actions is a specialty of the US. Another current example: the cold blooded murder of Venezuelan citizens in violation of international law – this time not on the grounds that they were allegedly terrorists, but on the grounds that they were allegedly drug dealers.
ahornsirup@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Uh, no. I’m not. Learn to read.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Do you think the War on Terror is the first time that the US spawned countless atrocities against civilians?
IronBird@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
israelis were killing palestinians long before the war of terror though
DandomRude@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s true, but now with the same argument that the US has legitimized, on an unprecedented scale. Not that this is any kind of justification, but once again it is the US that is making it possible - by preventing UN sanctions against this criminal state.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The precedence in Netanyahu trying to stay in power.