15 Jan 24
@vivify saidThey were there yes, and with them were a whole bunch of other races, nations and groups, including Jews. They were mostly squatters living under some Empire starting with the Romans and finally the British. They purchased land if they wanted to like everyone else. Purchasing land and having a title deed does not mean you own the country or region. Between 1915 and 1948 the British, supported by the UN did the partition.
The Arabs were there for 1,500 years only to have their land suddenly taken and given to the Jews. Some "silver platter".
It is a silver platter compared to where they are now. I bet they would gladly go back to the 1948 partition plan boundaries. But they chose hatred and violence.
15 Jan 24
@shavixmir saidBoth groups were fighting prior to 1948. The UN Partition Plan was an opportunity for peace and rebuilding their respective nations. The Arab League [who made decisions for Palestine], chose not to accept peace.
Another load of crock.
The Jews (Israel didn’t exist yet) were already stealing land from the Palestinians from the 1930’s onwards. Groups like the stern gang.
From before the word go, the to-be Israelis were extending their land.
While the Jewish community accepted the 1937 and 1947 partition plans, the Palestinian Arab leadership, dominated by the Husseini family, rejected both plans categorically. Indeed, most Palestinians turned down the 1937 design, even though it designated only 20 percent of Palestine to the proposed Jewish state. Furthermore, the Palestinian leadership even rejected the 1939 British White Paper, which had promised them an independent state within ten years while limiting Jewish immigration and turning the Jews into a minority in an Arab Palestinian state.
Why, then, did the Palestinian Arabs reject these schemes, in particular the 1947 UN partition plan? Undoubtedly, some moderate or pragmatic Palestinians were prepared to accept a small Jewish state in part of Palestine.3 But the Husseinis' leadership - not democratically elected but backed by the Arab League - continued to intimidate its moderate brethren and to maintain its uncompromising position against the Jews. Even according to moderate Palestinian intellectuals, this leadership adopted an extreme policy vis-à-vis the idea of two states, thus grossly ignoring the will of the UN and the Great Powers, and leading the Palestinians into war and tragedy.
https://www.pij.org/articles/104/why-the-un-partition-plan-wasnt-implemented
15 Jan 24
@rajk999 said" Purchasing land and having a title deed does not mean you own the country or
They were there yes, and with them were a whole bunch of other races, nations and groups, including Jews. They were mostly squatters living under some Empire starting with the Romans and finally the British. They purchased land if they wanted to like everyone else. Purchasing land and having a title deed does not mean you own the country or region. Between 1915 and 1948 t ...[text shortened]... hey would gladly go back to the 1948 partition plan boundaries. But they chose hatred and violence.
region"
that's exactly what it fukin means
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@vivify saidRead my post again. I did not say democracy had been handed to the Palestinians on a platter. I said it had been handed to the Afghans on a platter.
Are you familiar with the term "victim blaming"?
Do you blame Native Americans for their oppression because they "capitulated"? Maybe the Chinese got what they deserved under Mao, right?
There is so much wrong with your post I'm not sure where to begin, like with your claim that democracy was handed to Palestinians "on a silver platter". When?
You blame Palest ...[text shortened]... them for fighting back against Israel's oppression.
I'm quite shocked to see such posts from you.
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@no1marauder saidThe USA were fools to think democracy could be 'imposed' on Afghanistan. The American govt of the day was advised by people from the region who knew better, and ignored the advice. And, yes, it cost much blood and treasure. It was a stupid mistake to invade Afghanistan in the first place, and stupider to spend twenty years trying to establish a Western style democracy there.
You must be joking. Surely you can't consider a government imposed on a foreign military occupier as a "democracy". That "coaching" resulted in somewhere around 200,000 Afghan deaths; it's hardly surprising its People decided that they didn't want a government acceptable to their US and UK "coaches".
Israel can negotiate with the Palestinians if they desire to. They d ...[text shortened]... Palestinian State (though he might accept a Bantustan type entity completely under Israel's thumb).
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@zahlanzi saidA title deed gives the holder ownership of a specific plot of land. In Palestine, Jews, Spanish, Arabs, even Chinese had title deeds, and none of them owned, controlled or governed the country. The country was governed by the Ottoman Empire and then the British from 1915. The British can be said to OWN THE COUNTRY, not title deed holders. The British governed, provided infrastucture, schools, hospitals, security and other institutions necessary for running a country.
" Purchasing land and having a title deed does not mean you own the country or
region"
that's exactly what it fukin means
Holders of title deeds do not run, manage or govern the country.
The British in conjunction with the UN partitioned the country, because the two main stakeholders could not agree to live in peace. The British were entitled to do that. If the Palestinians dont like it, and they did not, they can fight over it. They did, they lost, they got pushed back, and eventually they will be pushed completely out. Good riddance too.
Thats life. Its a tough lesson the Palestinians have to learn, but their head is hard, like yours, so I guess they will die before learning anything.
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@moonbus saidOkay. But even so, America spent years indiscriminately killing civilians; about 70,000 of them.
Read my post again. I did not say democracy had been handed to the Palestinians on a platter. I said it had been handed to the Afghans on a platter.
Yes, Afghanistan did start to stabilize into something resembling democracy but the Taliban was never eliminated. The terrorists who ruled Afghanistan simply took over after the shameful clusterfuk Biden caused by his sudden withdrawal of troops. Afghanistan never truly had democracy, the Taliban was simply in hiding until America left.
You know this though. You're not ignorant. Blaming the Afghani people for losing a "silver platter" they never had is an astonishing thing for you do.
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@vivify saidTo my way of thinking a silver platter is an opportunity, a chance to change your life for something better, presented by an unconnected entity who have nothing to gain from you. Therefore you need to get up, shake off your chains and go fight the Islamic extremists as well, and dont just wait for freedom to be handed to you. You decide to go out and fight, maybe die, but with a chance for your children to live in peace and prosperity.
Okay. But even so, America spent years indiscriminately killing civilians; about 70,000 of them.
Yes, Afghanistan did start to stabilize into something resembling democracy but the Taliban was never eliminated. The terrorists who ruled Afghanistan simply took over after the shameful clusterfuk Biden caused by his sudden withdrawal of troops. Afghanistan never truly had ...[text shortened]... the Afghani people for losing a "silver platter" they never had is an astonishing thing for you do.
Just in case people dont know what life under Islamic extremists is about here is an excerpt from someone living under the Taliban
I live in Afghanistan right now. Life under the umbrella of the Taliban is catastrophic. People live in poverty and misery. Women have been forced to wear the extremist hijab. They are not allowed to go to school or university. They still can't go to work. The Taliban have recently passed a law barring women from holding senior government positions. Minority rights are being violated.
The Taliban cabinet is full of illiterate mullahs who know nothing but war and destruction. Our educated people are fleeing abroad. People do not have the right to demonstrate and they are flogged. A religious extremist group came to power with the degenerate ideas of tribalism and ethnicism, and we went back to the Middle Ages, or better to say, to the Stone Age, and you know all this as Western propaganda?
I am really sorry to see that some people support terrorists and extremists when they never want such a system for themselves. They themselves want to study, educate, work, progress, women be free, people have the right to vote, but adheres from an extremist group that neither believe in human rights, nor women's rights, nor democracy and elections, nor any international principles. You defend them very happily. The official religion of Afghanistan has been Islamic since long ago. For at least the last twenty years we have seen a moderate Islam. We respect Islam, but we also know that we should not go to extremism.
We should not lag behind in progress and competition in the modern world. Our neighboring countries are all, in whole or in part, equipped with nuclear weapons. All of them are improving their standard of living and welfare and have an open and free society. Even Pakistan, which supports the Taliban, Islamic law (or rather terrorist principles instead of Islamic law) and social restrictions in Afghanistan, does not want these principles to prevail in their own country at all. In which Islamic country do girls and women not have the right to education and their illiteracy? In which country is flogging of women supported? In which country is a totalitarian and undemocratic system supported? In no country!
But you support the Taliban. You can not understand life in hell. You will never feel the Afghans and their pain. The pain of an Afghan girl who can't go to school and if she goes out she can't wear the clothes she wants because otherwise she will be punished with a whip. The pain of an Afghan woman who is the only breadwinner in the house and live in poverty with several orphans, no one can understand the pain of people who see people in other countries living in freedom, prosperity and development but themselves in a prison, unless they have experienced it. Can anyone better understand the atrocities of the Holocaust than the one who came out of the Nazi concentration camps alive but lost all his family and friends? It's not about withdrawal of US or some political cliches. It's about humanity. Humanity is truly a dream.
Forgive me for this emotional post, but I am very saddened to see educated people express happiness from takeover of the power by a savage terrorist group that has been killing the people of Afghanistan for years with terrorist and suicide attacks and have no respect for our human rights. However, there are some extremist who support the Taliban, but still the majority of society is against them in Afghanistan. They support human rights and don't want go back to the dark days of 1990s.
https://qr.ae/pKqhuW
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@vivify saidI do not blame the Afghani people. It's not their fault that they could not make American style democracy work for them; they don't have the historical traditions necessary to make it work.
Okay. But even so, America spent years indiscriminately killing civilians; about 70,000 of them.
Yes, Afghanistan did start to stabilize into something resembling democracy but the Taliban was never eliminated. The terrorists who ruled Afghanistan simply took over after the shameful clusterfuk Biden caused by his sudden withdrawal of troops. Afghanistan never truly had ...[text shortened]... the Afghani people for losing a "silver platter" they never had is an astonishing thing for you do.
Much of that region of the world has been subject to invasions and conquests, by Tamerlane, Ghengis Kahn, as well as Persians and Sikhs, for over a thousand years. The legal traditions and institutions of the region have little in common with those of England and its English-speaking former dominions, such as Australia, NZ, Canada, and the USA. Our Western notions of democratic self-government go back as far King John, whose power was limited by a) Parliament and b) secular documents (e.g., Magna Carta). The political climate of the Ottoman Empire did not bring forth such weighty tomes as Locke's Two Treatises of Govt., or Th. Paine's The Rights of Man, or Rousseau's Social Contract. It is foolish to suppose that Western style democracies can be instituted in such places where there is no historical tradition of limiting the power of heads of state by secular instruments. (The Ottoman's Empire's first constitutional era in the 19th c. was short-lived: parliament survived for only two years before the sultan suspended it.)
I blame the stupidity and arrogance of Donald Rumsfeld and the theoretical architect of post-Cold-War US conservatism, Paul Wolfowitz, for the debacle in Afghanistan. After the collapse of the USSR, they thought they could re-make the world in their image with regime changes and some hastily cobbled-together 'nation building.' It failed miserably, at horrendous cost of blood and treasure.
Afghanistan did not widely stabilize under US occupation, only locally and superficially. The Taliban made steady progress in reconquering territory and already had something like two thirds of the country under its control by the time Trump negotiated America's withdrawal.
England tried to pacify Helmand province a hundred years previously and were driven out, with heavy casualties, by stiff local resistance. I was dumbstruck when Blair was stupid enough to commit the UK to another such adventure in the same province a hundred years later. They left with their tails between their legs the second time.
I hope the West learned from this debacle, but I fear they have not.
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@Rajk999
I too know some Afghans. They do not consider the Taliban to be their own. The Taliban are the morphed second-generation Wahabist rebels of Ronald Reagan's mis-named freedom fighters, the Mujahadin, who were recruited (by the Saud family, I might add) to drive the USSR out of Afghanistan. What a tangled web the West weaves by interfering in regions where they don't understand the local people and traditions at all.
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@moonbus saidLet me have a read up on some of this stuff, and I will post later. For now, I know for a fact that regardless of peoples tradition or religion, they all want peace, prosperity and a decent future for their children. In some Islamic states they can see that democracy is not a requirement, since they are comfortable, but in others democracy is seen as necessary because the ruling body is not getting the job done. In the case of Afganistan, I am not sure which side Afganistan is on. I dont think the US is to blame for Afganistans woes.
@Rajk999
I too know some Afghans. They do not consider the Taliban to be their own. The Taliban are the morphed second-generation Wahabist rebels of Ronald Reagan's mis-named freedom fighters, the Mujahadin, who were recruited (by the Saud family, I might add) to drive the USSR out of Afghanistan. What a tangled web the West weaves by interfering in regions where they don't understand the local people and traditions at all.
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@moonbus saidThe US armed the Mujahideen against the USSR, and they successfully got rid of the communists. It was the hope of the US that democracy would prevail because this is what leads to peace and prosperity. But instead of that the Taliban was formed out of the Islamic 'freedom fighters'. I cannot see how the US failed or is to blame for this. Afghanis want democracy.
@Rajk999
I too know some Afghans. They do not consider the Taliban to be their own. The Taliban are the morphed second-generation Wahabist rebels of Ronald Reagan's mis-named freedom fighters, the Mujahadin, who were recruited (by the Saud family, I might add) to drive the USSR out of Afghanistan. What a tangled web the West weaves by interfering in regions where they don't understand the local people and traditions at all.
A survey by the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies examines, for the first time, the people’s views on regime type in the country. The survey, which was conducted in 34 provinces of Afghanistan, found that over 68 percent of respondents prefer the post-2001 political system compared to the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate. Over 80 percent of these respondents say they support and endorse the legitimacy of a political regime where the head of the state and the country’s leaders are directly elected by the people in a free and fair election. Over 80 percent of these respondents also support elements of a democratic regime such as women’s rights and liberties, social equality, and freedom of expression.
This finding shows that the people of Afghanistan support an electoral democracy and refuse the Taliban’s Emirate. It also challenges the conventional wisdom that suggests democratic values and processes are alien to and not supported by the people of Afghanistan, due to the tribal structure of the society. According to this assumption, democratic decay, on the one hand, and the growth of the Taliban, on the other, are outcomes of the people’s unfamiliarity with the Western notion of electoral government and their support for tribal and religious mechanisms of governance and legitimation. The new survey does not confirm this assumption. It shows that the past two decades of practicing democracy through voting, media, and civil society activities have significantly influenced people’s political choices. Despite the post-2001 political system’s inability to produce an effective government, the people still prefer it to the Taliban’s Emirate.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/02/what-kind-of-government-do-afghans-want/