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aprzhu.bsky.social
april zhu
@aprzhu.bsky.social
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aprzhu.bsky.social
Quote: "An omnipresent feature of liberal chronicles of the occupation is a fixation on how much was wasted: the $2.13 trillion spent and the 176,000 people who died. Surveying the destruction wreaked on Afghanistan, these accounts conclude, unsurprisingly, that the war was a total failure. The Taliban are once again in control of Kabul. Al Qaeda runs gold mines in Badakhshan and Takhar provinces. The Afghan army is a distant memory. This humiliation is often presented as a mystery. How could so much money—more than was spent on the Marshall Plan—and “goodwill,” in the New Yorker’s words, have achieved so little? But the occupation succeeded! Every military failure was a triumph. Behind every botched mission was someone getting paid; more failures meant more opportunities to profit."
September 14, 2025 at 2:35 PM
aprzhu.bsky.social
It was international actors in the US-led "liberal world order" who undercut popular calls during the Revolution for "100%" civilian government and applauded the power sharing of military and militia that inevitably cracked into the violent counterrevolution that is now called "a war about nothing."
August 7, 2025 at 2:29 PM