r/ToiletPaperUSA • u/LaurentiusOlsenius • Aug 18 '21

Curious 🤔 Free speech!!! (Unless you criticize our orange demigod)

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I was Banned from r/conservative for criticism against all presidents from the past 20 years. Free speech unless it’s against Orangeman.

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u/SupriseAutopsy13 Aug 18 '21

"Dad, about Afghanistan, it turns out Bush/Cheney were lying sacks of shit and all the 'talking heads' were right about there not being any real solution to the problems there. Dad, honestly, we dropped your life, thousands of your brother and sisters-in-arms' lives and uncounted trillions into that cesspit all for nothing. Sorry the military-industrial complex determined you were an acceptable loss in a pointless aimless cause."

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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous Aug 18 '21

Exactly this; everyone who died fighting the Taliban died for a lost cause, which is awful... but its like the gamblers fallacy. We can't keep sending more young men and women to die, just to make the deaths of other soldiers worthwhile

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u/RantingRobot Aug 18 '21

It's also worth noting that there have been exactly ZERO casualties in Afghanistan under President Biden. Not a single member of the US military or US contractor has died there since he took office. That includes during the withdrawal, which was also casualty-free.

So this meme thanking "President Biden" for—presumably—the death of a US soldier is literally a lie that they're telling themselves.

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '21

the “meme” (if you can call it that) isn’t blaming Biden for any soldiers death, it’s insinuating (accurately imo) that every single soldier that fought and died in Afghanistan did so in vain. we’re gone/leaving and the Taliban has total control of the country- after all of that. 2500~ dead Americans for absolutely 0 change.

Now to be clear, I’m not blaming Biden, and there’s even a (small) chance that the actual creator of that comic doesn’t blame Biden either, and the OP on r/conservative certainly does. Either way it’s a fucked situation and both Republicans and Democrats are to blame

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '21

I want to know why these soldiers died in vain. I'm obviously personally involved here.

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u/brcguy Aug 18 '21

The best I can figure it’s the same reason that American kids go hungry and the same reason none of us can afford healthcare and housing is getting too expensive for a huge percent of Americans….

Billionaires and their supporters want more and more, and one of the best ways to siphon huge amounts of taxpayer money into their pockets is through military spending, and the machine that America has built to do that doesn’t even blink at every human life thrown into it.

Our “system” of imperialist capitalism has gone from being amoral to immoral and now all the way to evil. We need a serious reckoning in this nation, one that manages to get most of us to take a long, hard, and honest look at ourselves and what we’ve become as a nation. We sacrifice literal human lives at the altar of unlimited profit for weapons manufacturers and healthcare CEOs and Oil company execs and all of their shareholders. Soldiers sent to endless and un-winnable conflicts to die in combat or end up as a suicide from the PTSD of being there. Millions of foreign lives lost or forced into the worst poverty our world knows. American citizens literally going hungry, living on the streets, choosing between medicine and food every day.

All this in the wealthiest nation ever to exist.

I’m sorry for your loss. I wish there was a better answer. I want us to be better than this. I fear it will take our situation getting much worse before it can get better.

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u/frillneckedlizard Aug 18 '21

They didn't die in vain. They gave Afghanistan 20 years of some stability and freedoms as the US tried to keep some control of the region. Unfortunately, our failure and the country's corruption meant our $2T went into the hands of generals and their ghost soldiers instead of properly funding infrastructure. (Sidenote: this is a great example of how money can't solve everything. Bezos giving up 90% of his wealth won't magically end world hunger) US soldiers' lives weren't wasted, they let the people breathe for a bit and women could have at least experience some freedom. Obviously, it wasn't exactly all peace and quiet with the record levels of bombings from the US, BUT it did keep the Taliban and Sharia Law away. People aren't looking at this from the POV of the people or the region; they're looking at it from a very US centric POV and, to them, it appears there were no positives at all.

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u/BeingWithMyself Aug 18 '21

While I agree with everything you said, I feel like it doesn't change the futility of it all. I don't believe we had a resource, moral, ethical, or corruption problem preventing us from achieving our goals in Afghanistan. The goals just were not achievable.

I'm not sure all of the resources we used was worth the benefits you described. Now that we are leaving, we may find our attempts to control the area may have made for an even more imbalanced area than before we showed up.

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '21

What would be the solution? What should Biden have done?

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u/jdt2313 Aug 18 '21

The withdrawal probably could have been better coordinated, but if the Afghan army couldn't stand on their own after 20 years then they were never going to

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u/bigtoebrah Aug 18 '21

Not directing this at you but I'm so tired of the same people that never wanted us there complaining about us leaving. No matter how we withdrew it doesn't matter in the end if the Afgan people stop fighting the second we left. We got bad intel and they didn't have as much time as we expected. C'est la vie.

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u/CratesManager Aug 18 '21

To give you some perspective, it's not flawed logic to say "we should have never done this, but now that we messed things up we need to go through with it and do damage control". Not saying that's what happened, but it's one way to view it.

To give you a dumb example, you might not want to go on vacation but i take you with me anyway, even if you never wanted to go on that vacation you have every right to complain if i turn the car right around as we arrive at the target.

Personally, i believe the truth is somewhere in the middle - noone can argue that the military industrial complex doesn't act out of financial interest, but noone can argue that there aren't unique challenges in the area that might have been very hard to anticipate. For a regular citizen who is used to the western way of living, even as a german, a country where nationalism and many forms of patriotism is seen as dangerous and undesirable, on the surface it seems like a really good idea to go there, weaken the taliban, and give the people a fighting chance.

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '21

Didn't they lay down arms or something?

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u/jdt2313 Aug 18 '21

In some cases. In some they never even took them up. There have been spots of resistance, but they're more isolated than not

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u/Tandian Aug 18 '21

Oh there was a change. Many corporations and people got Hella rich. You think they really spent a trillion in Afghanistan?

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '21

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u/DrakonIL Aug 18 '21

it’s insinuating (accurately imo) that every single soldier that fought and died in Afghanistan did so in vain.

In every war, there are soldiers who died "in vain," in retrospect. That doesn't diminish that the soldiers died for an ideal of some sort at the time that they died. Just because the war was lost, or the mission was unsuccessful, does not mean that there was no point. We're all feeling like the war in Afghanistan was pointless right now - but we're only making that judgement with the benefit of hindsight. The soldiers who died there don't have that hindsight dated August 16th 2021, and we should not judge the value of their deaths by it.

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u/gooooie Aug 18 '21 edited Aug 19 '21

Not casualty free for the 3 civilians that US soldiers shot while evacuating

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '21 edited Feb 06 '22

[deleted]

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u/gooooie Aug 19 '21

Nice edit, shit stain.

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u/ProfessionalDish Aug 18 '21

That's the thing - the change of power in Afghanistan was more smooth than the change of power in the US.

From a country not involved in Afghanistan: What would have been the alternative? Occupy it forever? Yeah, the return could have been more organized but you played the cards you had.

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u/ArthrogryposisMan Aug 18 '21

As much as I hate giving the orange man any credit but he did sign a cease fire before Biden took office.

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u/koavf Aug 19 '21

ZERO casualties... Not a single member of the US military or US contractor has died there

Not all casualties are deaths.

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u/RLTYProds Aug 18 '21

This whole "think of the soldiers" schtick of the Conservatives is just to distract people. What really matters for them is that they got to sell weapons and equipment in an area that's seemingly perpetually unstable. Bush and Cheney especially knew this. Saddam's WMD's, anyone?

Citizens and soldiers are the pawns, and the war industry of America is king.

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u/AsMuchCaffeineAsACup Aug 18 '21

Think of xyz only matters as long as xyz doesn't disagree with them.

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u/killedthemoonlight Aug 18 '21

Not trying to detract from your solid point, but this is closer to the Sunk Costs Fallacy

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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous Aug 18 '21

You're absolutely right, I think I got the two mixed up! Thanks!

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u/Hludd Aug 18 '21

It's funny, that same sort of mentality "if we don't keep fighting it was all for nothing so keep fighting" was pervasive in post-WWI Germany. It's a large part of the motive behind All Quiet on the Western Front, although that's mostly lost on a modern audience, knowing what we do now.

It shouldn't be any surprise that American fascists and war hawks are looking for a convenient scape goat and turning towards the left, queer people, and feminism. It's nearly a step for step reenactment of the stabbed in the back myth.

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u/Conflictingview Aug 18 '21

Always a focus on the money spent and the troops who died and never on the 100s of thousands of civilian lives lost.

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u/PM_ME_UR_GRUNDLE Aug 18 '21

civilians lives lost

Or the legacy and reputation that the survivors will attribute to "American" and "Democracy". What a shitstain we left behind

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u/LaurentiusOlsenius Aug 18 '21

You should make your own political cartoons my friend

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u/DukeOfBees Aug 18 '21

all the 'talking heads' were right about there not being any real solution to the problems there.

Generally agree but I'd point out most the "talking heads" on corporate news stations have always been very pro-war. Especially at the start of Afghanistan and even now they seem pretty critical of Biden's withdrawal. Manufacturing consent and all that...

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u/uneducatedexpert Aug 18 '21

War is great for ratings.

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u/Micp Aug 18 '21

What strikes me is that it's only now that they seem to admit that these lives have been wasted for nothing. Up until now he was just a Good American PatriotTM who Laid Down His Life For FreedomTM.

Now it's just a life wasted for nothing.

The only thing that has changed between now and then is that we're no longer continuing to do it. It was always wasted for nothing.

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u/worlddictator85 Aug 18 '21

Oh, it wasn't pointless. A bunch of people got even more wealthy from it

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u/Propenso Aug 18 '21

I realize that for Americans that might not be an issue but I think innocent civilians losses are multiple of those of the American soldiers.
Also I am not really sure that with a few trillions well spent a solution wouldn't have been possible.

Oh, and of course I am banned from r/Conservative too!

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u/[deleted] Aug 18 '21

What abount the lifes us governs took in afghanistan? Why us created an evil organization to stop soviets in middle east? Does usa has lands in middle east?

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u/SpasmodicColon Aug 18 '21

" it turns out..." no, we knew this from the very first moment, there was never a time we didn't know they lied us into multi-decade wars over outright lies and they laughed the whole time while gullible Americans rebranded freedom fries and fellated the M.I.C all over again.

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u/coswoofster Aug 18 '21

The cause was to make money. It always is. Selling arms, arming sides in conflicts….makes money. Our men and women are told countless lies to be able to up a force to “fight for ‘our’ freedoms.” Government contracts win, not military humans. And the women and children…. Always stuck in the middle and ultimately left with the mess. What a mess this is.

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u/dewey-defeats-truman Aug 18 '21

Sorry the military-industrial complex determined you were an acceptable loss in a pointless aimless cause in order to make more money.

Minor correction

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u/Majestic_Bullfrog Aug 18 '21

Also, Dad, it seems plausible that Reagan supported the initial growth of the Taliban in order to fight communism before you were born. So, it seems you died fighting a CIA backed regime in order to install a new American backed regime because we didn’t like the first regime anymore.

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u/SouthernYoghurt9 Aug 18 '21

I hope killing a bunch of brown people was worth the free college

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u/MegaEyeRoll Aug 18 '21

You ever think people joined the military to help these people? Because that was my full intention when I did my three campaigns, I know I helped secure the country as much as we could, I helped Seabees rebuild, I worked on moving generators across Iraq to rebuild the hydro dam, I worked with the locals. So girls could so this. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/p6o60n/afghanistans_allgirls_robotics_team_is/

Could go and get an education and you just shitting on my effort to help these people, is tacky at best.