Soon you will be rooting FOR the Taliban.

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This is why people ask questions- because we all have different interests, priorities and knowledge, and not everyone knows everything about the world and the human race. Everyone's basic knowledge is different.

For example: I'm constantly surprised when people can't spell words; don't know the meaning of every word; don't know the names of most British animals and plants, including their Latin names; can't tell the time without a watch by using the sun; can't read a map; can't smell the air and know when it's going to rain or snow. Isn't all that basic knowledge? Not for everyone it seems.

*let them kill each other, basically ?

A bit like waring local gangs, really. I think the main gang that controls everything is going to just keep a watch on things and let them kill each other and not really interfere unless they're causing them problems.

Basically the US military strategy on this stuff, too.. if a couple different terrorist groups wanna shoot each other, whatever, let them do it so long as it doesn't interfere with American profits. But as soon as it does they'll pick a side and wipe out the other, or pick no side and just carpet bomb them all.. just depends what's best for business. Only real difference is the scale of the gangs involved. It's all the same sort of conflict over territory and money.

I mentioned Pakistan. Al Qaeda is given free licence by the Pakistan military to operate in the northern border areas (what the British called north/west frontier). They continue to control these areas and grow poppies for opium production.

Last edited by cyberdad on 07 Dec 2023, 7:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This is ass backward.

The Soviets were not seeking to "get rid of" any group in Afganistan as such. They were trying to crush and conquer Afghanistan in order to prop up a Soviet Style puppet regime. The resulting war drove hundreds of thousands of Afghans out of the country as refugees, and pretty much drove the Afghan people into the arms of the native Jihadists, and attracted Muslim fighters from around the world including a certain Ben Laden to fight the Soviets. The war created the problem in the first place. It was not a solution to the problem.

I am not faulting you. I was just blind sided.
you're a Brit so you have some excuse for not knowing the origin of a recent American war.

And you're not the worst.

Some years ago there was a certain older gentlement with strong opinions who was a know it all sounding off on stuff.

One day he corrected me ...corrected me from being right!

I said that same sex marriage is like the slavery issue of old in that it cant be left to the states. The whole nation has to make up its mind one way or the other.

He "informed" me that "slavery was legal throughout the US until 1865 when they did the 13th Amendment".

Here in the USA every tenth grader knows that by the eve of the Civil War (1861 to 1865) the northern half the US consisted of "free states" that had abolished slavery, and that the south still allowed, and relied upon, slavery. So not only was this WP gentleman dead wrong (individual slates had outlawed slavery) he was...dumping in his pants and making a fool of himself by showing that he knew less about his own country than a tenth grade drop out.

Imagine if a British person thought that the Queen Elizabeth who knighted Sir Francis Drake for saving Britain from the Spanish Armada was the SAME Queen Elizabeth who knighted the Beatles! THAT would be the UK equivalent of how dumb this guy made himself look.

Sorry...I still havent gotten over that crazy conversation!

Thanks for clarifying. As well as not being interested in warfare and politics, I was also a child at school when all those things happened, my thoughts were elsewhere.

You're right, we aren't really taught American history in Britain, unless we specifically take a course in it.

British history goes back to 3000BC or further. We have to divide it up into different courses or there's no way we could study it all e.g. Prehistoric Britain. Roman Britain. The Dark Ages. The Viking Invasions. The Anglo Saxon Invasions. The Norman Conquest. Early Medieval. Medieval. Post Medieval. Tudor. Elizabethan. Stuart. Jacobean. Hanoverian. Georgian. Victorian. The British Empire is in there somewhere too. And then we start the 20th century and all it's eras.

Most people study a couple of those historical eras and don't know about the other eras. There just isn't enough time to learn it all, our brains aren't big enough.

Also a large percentage of Brits don't know that the USA used to be part of the British Empire. We've had so many foreign wars, we've owned so many countries that they all merge into one. The USA is just one of many.

Yeah Britain's Empire was at its zenith under Victoria, and began to shrink after WWII. But even at its zenith it had already lost control of the (what is now) the US east of the Mississippi. Like more than a million square miles.

So by 1910 Britain ruled 13 million square miles of the world...but another million square miles (the US) had already broken away).

One Brit on WP asked "why did the US put its capital on the eastern seaboard instead of in the middle of the country?".

And we Americans had to chime in to remind him that YOU Brits founded our country...as your colonies. And then we WP Americans had to go on to explain that only the narrow strip of land between the Appalachians and the sea were settled and civilized. So back then when we first broke away from Britain Washington DC WAS the middle of that (narrow bacon strip shaped) country that stretched north-south along the Atlantic shore.

In contrast to the UK our history is only four centuries (and only 250 years were as an independent nation). And in my day the schools taught the post-colonial period in two parts 1776 to 1865 (beginning of the Revolution to the end of the Civil War), and 1865 to "now" (which was circa 1970- almost one fourth of US history has elapsed SINCE I was in school so I dunno how they split it up now). But when we got to the part two part...they didnt even bother with theh post civil war reconstruction period. They started with the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929

I assume by "our" you mean the US of A and not the native americans or other groups

That's exactly what I mean. Brits aren't taught American history at school. We'd have to take a specialised course in it, probably at university.

I think school children are generally taught either:

The history of Roman Britain, because of course the Roman Invasion had a massive effect on Britain and changed our lives completely. Much like the Brits invading America I suppose: an army subdues the native population. Well, that is the entire history of Britain: an invading army comes along to subdue the natives! That's happened so often in Britain I'm not sure of the total number of invasions we've had. A proper historian will have to answer that.

Or: Tudors and Stuarts (Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and the Scottish Stuart kings) Because of course Henry VIII had a massive effect on Britain too, he changed the country's religion from Catholic to Protestant, a huge change at that time of history.

Or: WW2, how it happened and the after effects. Obviously that involved America but that was recent history.

Of course, we could ask why Britain put its capital on the east coast as well! Hmm...that was caused by invaders too! The Roman invaders founded Londinium which became London.

There seems to be a pattern! I never thought of that before. An invading force comes along and establishes the capital city on the East coast of the country!

Well...it was we Americans who...designed the street layout and built our new Capital city soon after winning independence. The British ruled the original 13 colonies seperately. There was no single "capital" of British America.

But you have the right idea. That only the eastern seaboard (the original 13 colonies) were settled. So the capital had to be a city on the eastern seaboard (Philadelphia had been the capital of the new nation prior to the founding of Washington). And after that American history is this epic tale of the westward expansion beyond the Appalachians. They whole mythic frontier thing.

The Roman invaders not only built your first cities (London, Bath, Winchester, and others) and roads...they were the first to have writing. So they were the first to have written records. So ...strictly speaking...British history begins with the Romans.

So here's a question for you? Do you think groups like the Taliban are taking advantage of the Southern border crisis?

Traveling from...Afghanistan to Mexico...so you can trek across the Senora Desert to reach the US border...which is no easier to cross now than it ever was?

The 9-11 terrorists did not enter via the southern border. Dont see how the current crises would change the way terrorists get here.

And most terrorists in America are native born White guys.

There were a couple of mass shooters who were Arabs who claimed that they did it in the name of Allah (Georgia, San Bernadino California) but they did not get via the southern border either.

No harder than the route Russians need to trek, but I ran into a grandfather, father and son who had no problem admitting they came in through the Southern border. We have a very large Russian community just South of St. Augustine, Fl., in a place called Palm Coast.
For the sake of argument, let's say you're right. I'll word my question a little differently this time. Do you think groups like the Taliban are in the USA, right now? Regardless of how they arrived...

You mean Al Queda or ISIS more than the Taliban (who beat up on thier own people but arent into exporting terrorism so much).

Among Muslim North American immigrant communities some number of Jihadist individuals have been in the US for thirty some years now.

The CIA and the FBI even keeps tabs on American mosques.

Lone wolf individuals like the Boston Marathon killers are probably here.

So being away from those countries for that 30 year time span does nothing to diminish the desire to kill the infidel? That they are self-described Jihadists after all this time is sort of contrary to the theories that exposure to, education of and opportunities in other walks of life can help humanize the enemy. But, I tend to forget that only applies to whites. Everyone else gets a free pass, right? Jihadists launching Jihad is A-Okay, and the next time they do it, we'll need the UN to tell us what an actually appropriate response is to avoid a humanitarian crisis. Because after all, it's all our fault anyway.

Got it! Thanks!

WOW.
So you...dropped some acid...and then hallucinated seeing a whole book full text that I did not write!

You must be on some GOOD stuff!

They havent struck in all that time. But who knows? Maybe theyre bidding their time to strike at some moment.