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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   29540 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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We now know that the people running the occupation were systematically lying to the public about the occupation's prospects and achievements for most and perhaps all of those twenty years, because in fact the occupation was achieving nothing of identifiable value. (…) What goal would staying longer have achieved?

Not dr_analog, but an obvious answer - not necessarily mine, but obvious - would be "the same goal as keeping a dangerous terrorist in prison even if the rehab program he's supposedly signed up for has a snowball's chance in hell of reforming him". The people in charge lying about how well the turn-it-into-an-enlightened-democracy project was going looks like a grievous blow to the entire enterprise if you think westernizing Aghanistan was actually the point, but not if you think that "we're just staying as long as it takes to turn them into a peaceful democracy" was always just a fig leaf to make the bitter pill of "we're indefinitely occupying this colonized territory to keep the barbarians suppressed" go down.

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