The Off Topic Topic

[celedhring]

Is there a word for nostalgia for a time you weren't alive in/don't remember or experience? I feel like there must be (possibly German). Just saw Stranger Things is coming back and it made me wonder.

Wish that word applied to me, I was perfectly alive and remember lots of it

[Crazy_Ivan80]

We won.  We didn't hand back Al Andalus

They may still get it, and the whole of western Europe too at current rates of mass migration and infiltration by the brotherhood.

[The Minsky Moment]

Like most wars, all sides lost, some more than others.

I wouldn't say even the Taliban won - there were in control when the war started and managed to get back to where they started, but they took quite a bit of damage in the interim.

[Tonitrus]

Not sure I agree.  While the Taliban was the dominant faction, they were a fair bit away from full control of Afghanistan in 2001. Now they have near total control...so a fair bit further than where they started.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - there's no Northern Alliance now and also they appear simply more "state-like" than I think was the case in 2001. Although that may just be a reflection of more international engagement, if not formal recognition - so the old Taliban were only recognised by Saudi and Pakistan. I think now Russia recognises them while Iran, Pakistan, China, Saudi and other Gulf states have appointed ambassadors or diplomatic missions if not quite recognising them.

[Tonitrus]

And that was perhaps how we helped create the problem...we drew all of the other factions (the Northern Alliance) into the "unity" government, and then left*...leaving the Taliban to destroy them with greater ease.

Perhaps everything would have been easier if we'd been lucky enough to have found/killed OBL within the first few weeks, we'd have been able to not get sunk into staying.

[Valmy]

Left...after 20 years.

We should have just let the factions take control.

[Zanza]

Is there a word for nostalgia for a time you weren't alive in/don't remember or experience? I feel like there must be (possibly German). Just saw Stranger Things is coming back and it made me wonder.

No such word in German.

[Tonitrus]

Left...after 20 years.

We should have just let the factions take control.

You're probably not wrong...the NA and other factions were not sweethearts though.



That said, there were a lot of pressures from both the right and left sides of politics for us to stay.  Neocons for the imperial "nation-building" on the right, and "we can't leave the women to be oppressed" from the left (though granted, that paled in comparison to the former, and was more of a desired side affect of our presence there).

Not even to mention that Iraq took away a lot of the spotlight and let Afghanistan simmer in the shadows for quite some time.

It might be curious to speculate if OBL would have come out of hiding from Pakistan at some point if we had just ravaged the Taliban for a bit, and then left after a few months when it seemed like he vanished...but we are where we are.

[Syt]

Received my annual utilities bill. Electricity has a nice breakdown of water, wind and solar (I've signed up for CO2 neutral only). 

My gas bill says, "100% natural gas of unknown origin." 

[Syt]

From reddit: newspaper ad from 1915.

[Josquius]

Ah Dobbin. Not heard that a while.

[Valmy]

You're probably not wrong...the NA and other factions were not sweethearts though.

They were not. But they were our assholes. After all we did not drive out the Taliban because they were evil, we did it because they were harboring the guy we were after. The notion we could turn Afghanistan into a modern democratic country was obviously insane at the time. I always thought disarming the warlords was a mistake.

[Razgovory]

The best part of working is the when 40+ year old manager come back to flirt with the underage girls.

[Tonitrus]

Sounds like a situation that calls for a Hansmeister maneuver.