Well, I can list a WHOLE lot of things where hardcore GOP and Taleban agree 100%: Abortion, education, religious courts, women’s rights (or rather lack thereof), patriarchal supremacy, conservative world views, certainty of divine right to govern, view on LGBTQ+, view on science, view on getting vaccines, no separation of church and state.. and so it continues.

The American revolution happened because rich, white slaveowners were unhappy with paying taxes and getting hardship from their remote rulers.

The 2001 Afghan war happened because, seeking an outlet for 9/11, Afghanistan was the least complicated hardcore Muslim ruled country, in foreign policy terms, and CIA knew a few ppl back from when they gave them lots of guns and Stinger missiles to shoot down Russian choppers in the 80s. Bush Jr. led the charge to send a huge amount of taxpayer money into the Military Industrial complex, and emboldened by the initial quick progress decided to stockpile munitions abroad, in places like Kyrgyzstan, preparing for the Iraq war.

We all know now that all the official pretenses for the Iraqi war was bullshit. It was just a matter of the GOP hawks, perhaps spurred on by some lobbyists of the military industrial complex, using any and all excuses to keep the flood of $$ rolling, eventually expanding into PMCs and the deluge of $$$ taxpayers has paid for them (and are still paying, in some instances).

To keep this about Taleban and Afghanistan, the US led initiatives has mainly been about paying off locals to act like soldiers, paying off the Taleban to stop fighting and now that the $$ was being turned off, neither wanted to continue. So now we have a lot of prime US military hardware, given to the ANA, in Taleban hands. And I wonder what the next excuse will be to start a new war there.

All the lives lost, all the wounded – just to gain/save political face and hand $$$ over to greedy corps led by the 0.001%