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Has anyone else read this book by William Blum (who is proud that it was endorsed by Osama binn Laden )? Because he often displays a complete ignorance of history and has many odd conclusions (Such as the U.S. caused the Soviet intervention in Afganistan by supporting the Mujahadeen and Afganistani government before the Soviet invasion), I would like disscuss the book.
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So that's where you first put it down, and then you start swearing about it?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Blayne Bradley
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Actually he's right on that one, its historical fact that the US supported unrest versus the Pro-Soviet Afghani gov't to provoke a Soviet response into Afghanistan.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Actually he's right on that one, its historical fact that the US supported unrest versus the Pro-Soviet Afghani gov't to provoke a Soviet response into Afghanistan.
Just as the Soviets supported an Afghan government that would ke tou to them as part of their sphere of influence?
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Blayne Bradley
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So how about that Manroe Doctrine.
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Ahh, the Manroe Doctrine. Is that placed next to the Declaration of Mandependence in the Library of Manress archives?
Sorry, it's just such a funny misspelling I had to. It could have happened to anyone and I would have done the same thing. Posts: 1577 | Registered: Sep 2005
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The US has done many unsavoury acts as well in the interests of the Sphere of influence of the United States, all great powers have a sphere, and every reason to believe that Afghanistan would have been significantly better off with the Marxist (which supported things such as equality and woman's rights) government then the two decades of Taliban hellhole.
Afghanistan and the Soviet Union have had close ties since the 20's with significant economic cooperation since the 50's.
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OK, yes. The USSR and the US had no business having dealings with Afghanistan at that time.
quote:Sphere of influence of the United States, all great powers have a sphere
Yes, the difference being that the US had a strategy of "containment" while the USSR had a policy of promoting communist uprisings around the globe.
quote:and every reason to believe that Afghanistan would have been significantly better off with the Marxist (which supported things such as equality and woman's rights) government then the two decades of Taliban hellhole.
Did Mr. Turtledove loan you his crystal ball again?
quote:Afghanistan and the Soviet Union have had close ties since the 20's with significant economic cooperation since the 50's.
Except when you know the USSR invaded and ended up butting heads with the mujaheddin and the warlords who (in the latter's case) have had real power there for centuries.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Actually he's right on that one, its historical fact that the US supported unrest versus the Pro-Soviet Afghani gov't to provoke a Soviet response into Afghanistan.
No, I know we were, but I fail to see how that makes the U.S. responsible for the war. And BlayneBradly, would the Afganis be better off the way the Cambodians, Chinese, Bolivians, Ukranians, etc. are?
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quote:Originally posted by youngnapoleon: ... would the Afganis be better off the way the Cambodians, Chinese, Bolivians, Ukranians, etc. are?
Uh, yeah.
Thats an odd grouping. Pretty much all of the countries you picked are classified as medium human development (life expectancy, education and per-capita GDP (as an indicator of standard of living)) by the UN while Afghanistan is the only one that is classified as low. It's not even close with a minimum 0.241 distance on a scale of 0 to 1. (Not to mention Afghanistan is second to dead last)
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quote: And BlayneBradly, would the Afganis be better off the way the Cambodians, Chinese, Bolivians, Ukranians, etc. are?
The Chinese, at least, are way better off than the Afghanis.
quote:Yes, the difference being that the US had a strategy of "containment" while the USSR had a policy of promoting communist uprisings around the globe.
It's pretty hard to call that a principled or consistent stand, given the support of groups like the Contras.
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Destineer: I didn't say the US had a principled stand. This argument is dumb as I said before neither country had any business being in Afghanistan, and its guesswork at best to say how Afghanistan would be if the USSR had taken it over. I'd guess much the same way as all the other satellite countries they lost when the USSR fell.
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Blayne Bradley
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The USSR had plenty of business, it was a country on their border that was on the verge of collapsing to extremists fundamentalists, a country that for more then half a century they have had deep ties with both the Pre-Marxist monarchists and the post monarchists Marxists.
They were invited in, the government wasn't a KGB puppet.
As for being better off, pre-Soviet intervention the Afghani's had a much higher development index then they do now, which only got worse with the Taliban.
The central government did have a modern military and some level of control, American intervention to arm the Mujahadine simply prevented them from being able to squash the rebels on their own.
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Blayne: Funny how the number of nations next to your border that necessitate your "involvement" increases as the number of countries you gobble up increases.
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Blayne Bradley
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Afghanistan has been historically on the Russian border since probably 1850, I don't see how this applies.
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OK, yes. The USSR and the US had no business having dealings with Afghanistan at that time.
quote:Sphere of influence of the United States, all great powers have a sphere
Yes, the difference being that the US had a strategy of "containment" while the USSR had a policy of promoting communist uprisings around the globe .
quote:and every reason to believe that Afghanistan would have been significantly better off with the Marxist (which supported things such as equality and woman's rights) government then the two decades of Taliban hellhole.
Did Mr. Turtledove loan you his crystal ball again?
quote:Afghanistan and the Soviet Union have had close ties since the 20's with significant economic cooperation since the 50's.
Except when you know the USSR invaded and ended up butting heads with the mujaheddin and the warlords who (in the latter's case) have had real power there for centuries.
I'm pretty sure the US had a lot to do with many of the uprisings in Central America and the Middle East (Operation Ajax anyone?). Both countries were willing to do whatever it took to stop the other from getting an advantage.
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quote:I'm pretty sure the US had a lot to do with many of the uprisings in Central America and the Middle East (Operation Ajax anyone?). Both countries were willing to do whatever it took to stop the other from getting an advantage.
The US would not have been willing to annex those territories, a compunction the USSR did not have.
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quote:Originally posted by youngnapoleon: ... would the Afganis be better off the way the Cambodians, Chinese, Bolivians, Ukranians, etc. are?
Uh, yeah.
Thats an odd grouping. Pretty much all of the countries you picked are classified as medium human development (life expectancy, education and per-capita GDP (as an indicator of standard of living)) by the UN while Afghanistan is the only one that is classified as low. It's not even close with a minimum 0.241 distance on a scale of 0 to 1. (Not to mention Afghanistan is second to dead last)
Cambodia:Communist genocide in the 1970s killed something like 14% of the population. China: The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revoloution were probably the largest mass murders in history. Bolivia: I admit I may remeber incorrectly, but I recall Che Guvera starting a bloody civil war/rebellion. Ukraine: Stalinist genocide against the Ukranian Catholic church and independent farmers in the 1930s is grossly underembered.
@Destineer: For some reason, no one today knows about Japanese atrocities in China, or the excesses of Red China. After the worst Marxist policies were thrown off, the nation got back on track economically, and the regime calmed down.
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quote:I'm pretty sure the US had a lot to do with many of the uprisings in Central America and the Middle East (Operation Ajax anyone?). Both countries were willing to do whatever it took to stop the other from getting an advantage.
The US would not have been willing to annex those territories, a compunction the USSR did not have.
Word. But don't forget that we greatly benefited from those coups. The Shah of Iran was pretty much a puppet to the West, and we were getting a lot of oil from them for a time.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Of course the United States would never have dreamt of invading any poor territories full of swarthy people; why would they want them? The US only annexes the huge territories of conveniently genocidable tribes; that way they don't have to deal with any messy guerrilla risings after the smallpox goes through. Besides which, there's no need to annex when you can economically dominate and have all the nice financial effects with none of the inconvenient voters. Some exceptions might be made for strategically placed naval bases, to be sure.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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KOM: I wasn't saying the US didn't interfere in other people's affairs. Only that Blayne's assertion that the USSR had reason enough to invade a country merely because of civil unrest within that country is ridiculous. It's just as bad as the US invading Vietnam because the totalitarian regime in the South asked us to.
SoaPiNuReYe: Yep, we were dumb to do those things too.
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You were saying the US didn't annex anyone. Go tell it to the Indians; or for that matter the Hawaiians, Philipinos, and Puerto Ricans.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: You were saying the US didn't annex anyone. Go tell it to the Indians; or for that matter the Hawaiians, Philipinos, and Puerto Ricans.
Well I'm pretty sure he meant that within the context of the Cold War.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: You were saying the US didn't annex anyone. Go tell it to the Indians; or for that matter the Hawaiians, Philipinos, and Puerto Ricans.
Well I'm pretty sure he meant that within the context of the Cold War.
Yes, I meant after we had our weird colonial phase, and realized it kinda made our July 4th celebrations less fun.
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youngnapoleon: Cherry-picking events won't do you much good unless you can demonstrate that things were actually better as an Afghani rather than being Cambodian/Chinese/Ukrainian/Bolivian.
In other words, the point isn't that life in medium HDI countries is a bowl of cherries, but that life in low HDI Afghanistan is extremely difficult.
You can verify something like life expectancy for yourself on something like Gapminder. For example, in China life expectancy at birth only ties with Afghanistan at the peak of the Great Leap Forward and rockets up afterword, by the time of the Cultural Revolution your life expectancy at birth is fourteen years better than in Afghanistan *now* and twenty-four years better than in Afghanistan at the time.
You'll see similar trends in Cambodia, Bolivia, and Ukraine. In fact, during your cited Stalinist genocide in Ukraine in the 30s, the life expectancy was three to six years better than in Afghanistan *now* let alone in Afghanistan at the time. Only during the actual war in the forties does the Ukraine breach Afghanistan's level.
Of course you don't have to take my word for it, you can see for yourself.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: You were saying the US didn't annex anyone. Go tell it to the Indians; or for that matter the Hawaiians, Philipinos, and Puerto Ricans.
Well I'm pretty sure he meant that within the context of the Cold War.
Yes, I meant after we had our weird colonial phase, and realized it kinda made our July 4th celebrations less fun.
Well then, doesn't the USSR have the same right to a weird colonial phase as the US did? I don't see that their crimes are any worse for being more recent. Condemn both if you will, but don't pretend that the US was doing anything but great-power politics.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: You were saying the US didn't annex anyone. Go tell it to the Indians; or for that matter the Hawaiians, Philipinos, and Puerto Ricans.
Well I'm pretty sure he meant that within the context of the Cold War.
Yes, I meant after we had our weird colonial phase, and realized it kinda made our July 4th celebrations less fun.
Well then, doesn't the USSR have the same right to a weird colonial phase as the US did? I don't see that their crimes are any worse for being more recent. Condemn both if you will, but don't pretend that the US was doing anything but great-power politics.
Then we get down to arguing scale, and I think the US would win that one, in terms of sheer square mileage and bodies killed, the USSR was worse by far, and I think that matters, but you can't argue that either side was a saint.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Blayne Bradley
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By which logic do you use BB that the Soviet Union intended to ANNEX Afghanistan? Stabilizing the region yes, strengthening their friendly gov't yes, but annexation is a very specific legal term in international law of which there is no evidence the USSR intended to do in Afghanistan, in fact I think you would be hard pressed to find even 1 inch of territory annexed by the USSR post 1945.
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Well, history isn't exactly on your side there. Out of curiosity, how many countries had the USSR put troops into and NOT annexed in the years immediately preceding 1945? They never really had the chance to annex Afghanistan outright because they never came close to really bringing stability. But with all the resources there, and considerably closer access to the Indian Ocean within reach, I have a hard time believing they'd pop in, spend all that money, lose all that materiel, and then skip out with a job well done. That seems like the far more faulty logic in play here.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Blayne Bradley
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They already had the right to transit and station troops in Afghanistan, already have preferential trade agreements and prospecting rights, them spending stuff there is simply to reinforce they're already existing privileges.
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I don't buy it. They spent boatloads of cash and a decade to secure Afghanistan; far more value than they ever got out of it. To "reinforce existing privileges"? They would have been far better off cutting their losses and letting the country devolve into madness instead of bankrupting themselves trying to "reinforce existing privileges." Of course, I'm not saying they were necessarily smart enough to see the difference and choose the wiser path, but given their history, I can't imagine they'd spend that much money and not leave with more than trade rights if the war had gone better.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Blayne Bradley
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It's nearly pathetically easy to come up with reasons for staying in, for one any success for islamic insurgents in Afghanistan translates to a far more unsecured border between the Central Asian republics and their own Islamic issues with Afghanistan.
Also the issue of pride, withdrawing would mean admitting defeat to the West in that they couldn't win "their Vietnam" either, then there's still the matter of the Sino-Soviet split, China was supporting the Mujahadine, so the Soviets had to stay in order for their strategy of containment to not lose a significant lynchpin.
Also a matter of the domino effect, losing Afghanistan could mean losing influence or control in previous thought stable and secure Outer or Inner territories.
Also the matter that losing Afghanistan strategically speaking loses significant portions of their access to Iran and a possible dash to the Persian gulf in a WWIII hypothetical scenario, it's easier for warplannings to deal with the soly USSR-Iran front compared to USSR AND Afghanistan.
It's historical and a political fact that prior to the Soviet intervention they already had everything they could possibly have had asked for from Afghanistan without having to fire a single shot, in either of the Monarchist or Marxist governments, the intervention would have been completely unneeded if it weren't for the CIA presence, which without of which the insurgents wouldn't have had as effective coordination or arms in which to resist.
Also is a historical fact from archives that the Soviet Union had actually was very reluctant to get involved, and had at first refused requests by Kabul to intervene until it was not only apparent that there was CIA involvement but also apparent that the Kabul gov't would be doomed without their help.
They had not only had everything, but had since the 50's been investing billions of rubbles into the Afghani economy and were significant to developing its infrastructure! This is easily verified.
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Out of curiosity, what was the dollar to ruble conversion rate, on average, during the Cold War?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Also, "Rogue State" sounds like a show that Anderson Cooper and Les Stroud would host together.
Except it would be eclipsed by "Axis," a show where Glen Beck and Bear Gryllis visit the evilest places in the world in contrived situations to boost ratings.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I don't think Glenn Beck is badass enough to be within 500 yards of Bear Grylls. He might explode if he gets too close. Crying on national television just doesn't cut it in the world Bear Grylls lives in.
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Blayne Bradley
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Out of curiosity, what was the dollar to ruble conversion rate, on average, during the Cold War?
Whatever the Soviets wanted it to be, command economy equals pegged currency.
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I think the request was for the actual rate. A government can say an exchange rate is whatever it likes, and make it illegal to exchange at another rate, but that doesn't mean they can make people want to trade currency at that rate, much less eliminate the black market.
For most of the time, I don't think it was even legal to trade rubles for other currencies (per the USSR). The black market rates I'm seeing quoted are about 6 rubles to the dollar, during the 70s.
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6 to 1? I wonder, at a cost of what seems to be 60 billion rubles for the Soviet war in Afghanistan, how much would that be after inflation compared to the American war cost?
Posts: 58 | Registered: Apr 2010
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: youngnapoleon: Cherry-picking events won't do you much good unless you can demonstrate that things were actually better as an Afghani rather than being Cambodian/Chinese/Ukrainian/Bolivian.
In other words, the point isn't that life in medium HDI countries is a bowl of cherries, but that life in low HDI Afghanistan is extremely difficult.
You can verify something like life expectancy for yourself on something like Gapminder. For example, in China life expectancy at birth only ties with Afghanistan at the peak of the Great Leap Forward and rockets up afterword, by the time of the Cultural Revolution your life expectancy at birth is fourteen years better than in Afghanistan *now* and twenty-four years better than in Afghanistan at the time.
You'll see similar trends in Cambodia, Bolivia, and Ukraine. In fact, during your cited Stalinist genocide in Ukraine in the 30s, the life expectancy was three to six years better than in Afghanistan *now* let alone in Afghanistan at the time. Only during the actual war in the forties does the Ukraine breach Afghanistan's level.
Of course you don't have to take my word for it, you can see for yourself.
Mucus, Perhaps you misread my post, beacuse I did not compare the quality of life in Cambodia, Bolivia, etc. to quality of life in Afganistan. All I said was that communism did much to impoverish the nations involved, a fact you have further help prove.
P.S. Off topic, but funnily enough, the Pulitzer prive of Walther Duranty wasn't revoked after he lied about Stalinist genocide in the NY Times.
Posts: 19 | Registered: Jul 2010
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)? Because he often displays a complete ignorance of history and has many odd conclusions (Such as the U.S. caused the Soviet intervention in Afganistan by supporting the Mujahadeen and Afganistani government before the Soviet invasion), I would like disscuss the book.
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