>Man, every time I read some stilted bullshit about martyrsI'm not sure anyone in the US would be doing much better if we were invaded by a vastly superior force. If China develops some exotic EMP technology, and then decides that they would like all of our natural resources and/or arable land, we would develop similarly fundamentalist narratives to deal with our subjugation.
Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. "Tear it down," they cried, "tear it down to its foundations!" O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us -- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. -Psalm 137:7posted by notion at 3:00 PM on October 25, 2010 [3 favorites]
>that doesn't mean I wouldn't still make fun of them, because most fundamentalist narratives are stupid.Really? I'm trying to imagine how that would play out.
i should troll some GOP websites and checking which ones are made on JOOMLA. hilarity might ensue :DJoomla! gets the Taliban, Drupal gets Al Jazeera. Sadly, there are no easy choices for conservative web sites.
>Yeah, and they haven't killed thousands of innocents, nor brutalized women for going to school, nor provided a rhetorical opportunity for blithe understatement, like saying that the Taliban have "provided stability to Afghanistan."Hmmm... So one million Afghans died in the 80s and 90s when we waged our proxy war with Russia and left the country to solve it's own problems. We've killed around 30,000 directly in this go around. But we're blaming it on the Taliban because, otherwise, Afghanistan is filled with peace and harmony?
>But since you started out with imagining that China had taken over the US and our only recourse was batshit fundamentalism, I assumed we were in the Imaginarium.No, I didn't say our only recourse was fundamentalism. I said many people would resort to fundamentalist narratives in order to cope. If China totally dominated us militarily, the only effective tactic would be the same kinds every resistance employs: hit and run attacks followed by blending back into the population. Many of those people would resort to religion to give them the will to voluntary end their lives, because that's what people do.
>Look, if you'd like to have an argument with me, I'm afraid you're going to have to learn to argue.*grabs popcorn*
>In conclusion: The "fundamentalist narrative" rhetoric from the Taliban is still stupid and they would have been better served by hosting it on Geocities, and you'd be better served not trying to play apologist for a bunch of murdering goat-fuckers.Oh. This again.
>This doesn't mean that the "fundamentalist narratives" aren't profoundly stupid (nor does it mean they're not a perversion of Islam).I never said they weren't irrational. I'm making the point that they are not unique to the Taliban. After a few hundred years of foreign intervention, and two world powers reducing their nation to rubble over the past 30 years, moderate voices are always drowned out by a desire for basic security. The United States can't provide security in Iraq or Afghanistan, and since 1980, has only made the situation worse in both places. That's why I "drive the argument off the cliff" with talk of imperialism. Because that type of imperial military intervention is very damaging to the country unfortunate enough to be invaded.
>In response to my pointing out that fundamentalist narratives are stupid, you shift the goalposts, by redefining "fundamentalist narrative" to include mainstream Christian rhetoric (which is pretty far away from the linked site's rhetoric). I do not object at this point; I consider a lot of mainstream Christian rhetoric stupid as well.'The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible...
>3: You object to my linking to a Christian militia with explicitly militaristic interpretations of the Bible as well as objectively stupid stances by pointing out that the Huttaree have been less effective militarily, while ignoring the whole made-up scenario problem. In comparing rhetoric in a hypothetical, the military effectiveness doesn't really matter.I'm making the assertion that the Hutaree Army, as long as they were killing Chinese, would not be extraordinary elements of American culture if the Chinese invaded. They're already here without any of the enormous pressure Afghanistan has been subject to over the past three or four decades. Imagine the Tea Party during an occupation. Is that clear enough? When survival really is on the line, the silly little things we like to mock about the Hutaree won't matter, and won't change the fact that they more legitimate than the invading Chinese army.
>In addition, characterizing the Taliban as having stabilized Afghanistan is so fundamentally stupid as to beggar the imagination.They are the only government-like organization to have ruled most of it between the US and Russian backed war in 1978 and the US invasion in 2001. Though one candidate thought they were a rock band during his campaign for the 2000 election, they were widely recognized as the "de facto" government in Afghanistan for the first time in two decades that it has had such a thing. If you find claims to the contrary, feel free to provide your sources.
>You then seek to drive the argument off some blah blah imperialism bullshit cliff, because, well, fuck, your points are stupid and fallacious, so why not pander to the crowd?I understand that you don't want to see the Taliban as legitimate. I wish they weren't the best Afghanistan could do right now. But after 30 years of war, much of it funded by the United States and Saudi Arabia, that's it. They have a propaganda team that says a lot of stupid things. Just like our serving generals, who blame a journalist for putting innocent people in danger without the slightest irony. Or religious messages hawked at every State of the Union from 2001 to 2008.
>Yeah, except that there wasn't stability there even during the Taliban's rule (civil war continued) and the economy in Afghanistan's been growing faster than the US economy since we invaded.There are two assumptions here. The first is that violent military action decreased with the arrival of the US military, which is false. The second is that an increase in GDP means an increase in stability and security, which it does not.
>Yes, and? Did you think you were proving a point there?Yes: we are better at PR, but still have fundamentalist narratives, all the way to the very heart of our government and military.
>And this is an insane assertion that rests on a mountain of hypothetical conjuring. We have been invaded before, and the mainstream didn't embrace extreme religious views — views far outside the mainstream — in order to cope. And even when American military religiosity was at its height, during the Civil War, we still had plenty of people willing to mock it. Your point is inane and your desire to tubthump over imperialism is obnoxious.This is not conjuring. This is a moral exercise: would you like a superior military to respond to terrorism committed by cells operating in the United States by invading us and forcing us to change our government? Would you mock the fundamentalist narrative of the Hutaree if they were firing from your side of the lines?
>Well, no. And your claim here has nothing to do with facts and only with ideology. The puppet government set up by the Soviets lasted past the fall of the Soviet Union, and controlled more of the country and provided more services and a better life than the Taliban did, even under direct attack from the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Even a brief trip to Wikipedia could have mitigated your aggressive ignorance.From your link to WikiPedia: "...the Soviet government... agreed with the United States on a mutual cut off of military aid to both sides in the Afghan civil war. It was to begin 1 January 1992.
>What a bullshit straw man. No, they weren't just filled with fundamentalist extremists. Those fundamentalist extremists were explicitly targeted by the Soviet-backed atheist government, and so were explicitly funded by theocracies and the Soviet's Cold War enemy. Pretending that this is an indigenous reaction to imperialism that represents mainstream Afghan thought is bullshit, and shows an extreme ignorance of similar developing nations and the rhetoric of fundamentalism. The EZLN aren't suicide Catholics; the Shining Path didn't blow up women's schools.Look, I hate the Taliban. They represent the ugliest parts of human nature. I certainly wish we were dealing with a Kazakhstan or a Tajikistan instead of a nation decimated by three decades of proxy wars. But that's not the reality. We blew the chance to let the Soviet Union take care of problems in it's own backyard, and instead, funneled billions of dollars to radical fundamentalists and destabilized the whole nation through our Pakistani proxy. As soon as the Soviets were gone, we walked away and left Pakistan to do what it wanted.
>The Taliban aren't even that popular in Afghanistan, but rather exert outsized political power due to their well-funded militias — similar to the way that the Tea Party simply isn't that large or popular a movement (despite their claims to the contrary) but is well-funded and organized.And how is the Taliban different from the Pakistani military? From the Saudi Arabian theocracy? Egypt? Or Iraq during the 80s, or Iran from '53 to '79? The only thing that the US government doesn't like about the Taliban is that they don't take orders. It's the same thing Pakistan hated about Ahmad Shah Massoud: independence.
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posted by 2bucksplus at 1:58 PM on October 25, 2010 [12 favorites]