(08-15-2021, 02:21 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 15-Aug-2021 World View: Young Zealots
Analysts have been making one idiotic statement after another. "Women
and girls will be able to go to school or work, as long as they wear
the hijab." "The Taliban will be moderate, because they need
international support." Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that
the Afghan operation has been a total success. This is just like DHS
secretary saying that the border is closed. Starting from Biden on
down, this is the worst American government in my lifetime, with one
disastrous policy after another.
There's only one analyst today that said something sensible: "The
Taliban leaders are being moderate, but after they're in power,
because they don't want to repeat the 1990s atrocities. But once
they're in power, it's the young zealots who will be committing
atrocities."
That's the Generational Dynamics position, and that's exactly right.
Other analyst observations of interest:
"The US army has been looking at a map of provinces, while the
Taliban have been looking at a map of tribes."
"The people of Afghanistan on social media are furious that Ashraf
Ghani fled the country, and he will pay the consequences."
I predict that there will be guerilla activity against the Taliban regime which has never shown even a pretense of democratic norms during its existence.
Ashraf Ghani did the reasonable thing in view of what happened to the Soviet puppet Mohammad Najibullah, who met this end:
Quote:Najibullah was at the UN compound when the Taliban soldiers came for him on the evening of 26 September 1996.[7] The Taliban abducted him from UN custody and tortured him to death, and then dragged his dead (and, according to Robert Parry, castrated[77]) body behind a truck through the streets of Kabul. His brother, Shahpur Ahmadzai, was given the same treatment.[78] Najibullah and Shahpur's bodies were hanged from a traffic light pole outside the Arg presidential palace the next day in order to show the public that a new era had begun. The Taliban prevented Islamic funeral prayers for Najibullah and Shahpur in Kabul, but the bodies were later handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross who in turn sent their bodies to Gardez in Paktia Province, where both of them were buried after the Islamic funeral prayers for them by their fellow Ahmadzai tribesmen.[78][/url]
There is simple death, and death Taliban-style.
Scary, huh? [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Najibullah#cite_note-brother&brotherdead-78]
I'll refrain from any discussion of the competence of American negotiation in the Doha Accord aside from giving the year (2020).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
