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Replying to
Roughly, the 1980s/now mapping would be (purely structural balance of power, with no value judgments of politics/ideologies in play) US = USSR Russia = US Kurds = Mujahideen Syria = Afghanistan Turkey = India Pakistan = Iraq+ISIS
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Americans of course have a very... interesting memory of what happened. Basically, Rambo 3 (1988). Noble US supplies noble Mujahideen to force evil empire to withdraw. Led by Rambo. The withdrawal was 1988-1989. Kashmiri insurgency began like 5 minutes later.
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The one difference here is that ISIS and Kurds are enemies, whereas in the 1980s, Pakistan was the supply chain to the Mujahideen, and later the "handler" as it metastasized into Taliban, Kashmir foreign terror outfits and eventually Al Qaeda. It was a godawful mess. Still is.
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It is really grimly hilarious how much narratives can influence how you think. I remember watching Rambo 3 and of course rooting for the "good guys" and hey, 3 years later, the people the movie portrayed had turned into the real-life bad guys in Indian newspaper headlines.
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I think the Kurds are basically screwed btw. They do not have the deep bench ideological and civilizational capability of Wahabbism to back them for decades. They appear to be a genuine cultural island. Everybody around them appears to have their knives out for them.
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I hope this localized analogy does not indicate a US collapse similar to USSR collapse. I think not. That withdrawal was caused by a desperate attempt to contain an unraveling of empire gracefully (and failing). This is an own-goal by one moron from a position of strength.
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Replying to
The painful irony here is that this outcome could have been avoided with a less intransigent president, who possessed advisers willing to counsel him on a good path but to respect his preferences and not to attempt to shackle him more strongly to path dependency
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