Biden says he does not regret Afghanistan withdrawal as Taliban take over more towns
- Thread starter Dwarvenhobble
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If searching for a certain quote from Trump is a task that requires endless patience, then perhaps it's like trying to find the biggest number; an endless, impossible task because such a thing does not exist? Is that what you are saying?
Your comparison is moot because sports doesn't require a public mandate. If Trump won the election then he's indeed the legitimate president because he has the mandate of the public (or at least the electoral college meant to bypass the public). Its not about ''thinking about what Trump believes'', its that the argument that Trump won the election allows for no other alternative. If he won the election then he is the legitimate president of the United States and Biden is an usurper.
Even if Trump were to accept that Biden is the de facto president then Trump's victory would still have made him the legitimate president. Because that's what you are when you win an election in a democratic society.
I've made my argument. You've made yours. Do you have a direct quote from Trump where he claims that he is "still the President", or not?
Even better. I have quotes where Trump said he won the election and that Biden is illegitimate, which makes Trump the legitimate president.
Do you guys really care about Houseman? Just ignore him.
I understand that you believe that one claim implies the other, but I don't believe that's true. It's fine, you have your interpretation, and I have mine, it's okay that we disagree. I'm just looking for a direct quote, free of any of the hoops and gymnastics that one has to do to get from point A to point B.
I don't think you have such a direct quote, because otherwise, you or anyone else would have presented it by now, so I'll drop this subject for now.
There are no hoops right. Just the most basic essentials of democratic society. He who has the public mandate has the right to govern. And those who don't have the mandate do not. Its really that simple.
Has he claimed the 2020 election was fraudulent recently?
He may accept that the alleged fraud and his victory are not officially recognised thus accepting the practical legal reality that Biden is now president. But to claim he was denied victory by an illegal fraud is necessarily to claim he is the legitimate president.
Question: if Biden did not win the election and is not the legitimate President, who is?
I said I'd drop the subject, since nobody can provide me with a direct quote, but I'll attempt to answer your question:
Biden is, because he is officially recognized as such.
Is Putin the legitimate President of Russia? If not, then who is? See how that's a silly question? It seems like an open secret that Putin kills his political opponents or has secured emergency powers, so that he "wins" every election. Putin is de facto President and will probably remain as such until he dies.
Whether or not Biden is legitimate is irrelevant. Whether Biden truly won the election is irrelevant. Like Agema said, Biden is officially recognized, and the legal reality is that Biden is now president. Nothing else matters. The process certified Biden as the winner.
Trump can claim fraud until he is blue in the face. I do not see that as being the same as claiming to be "still the President", as Rogue Wolf said, in quotes, implying that this was from the mouth of Trump himself.
I can claim that the gold-medalist cheated and robbed me of the medal, but that is not the same as claiming to be a gold medalist. It's claiming that I should be a gold medalist.
Please, let's stop talking about this. I've said my piece, you've said yours. We aren't going to convince each-other. All I wanted was a direct quote, not to be dragged into this argument about the transitive properties of legitimacy. You can all have the last word.
Yes, but you didn't ask who is the true, legitimate president of the USA.
What you wanted was evidence of who Trump says is the legitimate president of the USA. And the answer to that question is that Donald Trump says that Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the USA, every time he claims he should have won were it not for illegal fraud.
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The same head of state who had his own political opponents (most notably Taraki) assassinated? The same head of state whose leadership had given rise to the various rebellions to which the Soviet "invasion" was a response? The same head of state that the Soviets had informed of, and who welcomed the "invasion" because he had negotiated a treaty which allowed him to call on the Soviet Union for military assistance, and then had repeatedly requested the deployment of Soviet troops to help against the mujahideen? That guy, Hafizullah Amin?
What do these, other than the Sino-Soviet conflict, have to do with Afghanistan?
That's the one (though they also purged the other PDPA socialists and communists who had espoused non-alignment). Do you really want to go down the route of arguing that if a foreign government acts in a repressive manner, then invasion and decades of occupation are justified? Because I could have sworn that we spent years decrying the USA and UK for that imperialism-apologia.
I also like the idea that an invitation from Amin to intervene in defence of Amin's government provides justification to overthrow Amin's government and purge the party. Sound logic. I'd also like to point out how the government of Afghanistan requested US intervention too at various points, but I'm guessing that doesn't justify reinvading.
Can I take the pivot towards defending the overthrow of the government to mean that we've at least conceded that it obviously wasn't just about defeating insurgencies?
Invasions by the Soviet Union in a manner quite indistinguishable from other imperialist powers that can't be blamed on the US somehow.
Afghanistan: Taliban warns there will be 'consequences' if Biden delays withdrawal of US troops
The Taliban meets Sky News in Doha to discuss what happens next - and issues a stark warning about the withdrawal of troops from the country.
The Taliban wants the United States out by the 31st and says there will be consequences if they don't.
Depends who you ask. I've come across people who have argued that every single invasion the Soviets carried out was self-defence, justified because of the threat of Western imperialism. Their failure to comprehend the Soviet Union (and before and after it, Russia) as an imperialist power was something I found somewhat disturbing.
The USSR were in a cold war with the United States, and the rest of the capitalist world had been openly hostile since the beginning of their existence. As survival as a socialist state is very clearly dependent on being able to stand up to the United States and other servants of global finance capital, it's hardly a ridiculous proposition that bog standard great power competition would be a matter of self-defense and not per se imperialist.
Especially less so if you consider that Lenin had a somewhat more refined idea of what constitutes imperialism than simply maintaining influence over others by military and diplomatic means, and Lenin's idea is almost certainly what such a person would refer to-- as soon as I read Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, I might even be able to tell you what that idea is! I do know that the Soviet Union at certain points at least took pains to avoid some common characteristics of imperialism, such as a division between a wealthy core and exploited periphery-- something to do with making trades based on rough equivalents of hours of labor in production rather than market price, a solution which negates the advantage of one partner that comes from having a greater proportion of constant capital (machines, etc.) to variable capital (workers), an advantage which is as far as I understand it quite important to Lenin's theory of imperialism and the difference between imperialist nations and exploited nations. Such a basis for trade also gives each partner an incentive to make the other more productive and even out the difference in constant capital (investment in ever more efficient means of production) between them, an incentive which (given what we can see of the results of capitalist imperialism) doesn't appear to be present otherwise.
I must have missed the part where the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, Assad, Iran, Chile, etc. requested military intervention into their countries by the United States after negotiating treaties explicitly so that they could call upon the United States to provide a military presence if they felt it useful.
You mean the kleptocratic puppet government established by the United States? Can you not see the difference?
Of course not; the overthrow of Amin, given his unpopularity and apparent mishandling of his country's politics, can easily be characterized as pursuant to defeating the various rebel factions and foreign volunteers who, again, were backed by the CIA.
Nothing, then. OK.
Nice facetiousness. As you already know, those weren't the administrations I was referring to.
I still find it hilarious that you're using this negotiated treaty as a justification for intervening... which immediately included breaking the treaty itself and overthrowing/ assassinating the people who agreed to it. Its one of the shabbiest lines of reasoning I've ever seen.
I mean, you're in here defending a kleptocratic puppet government established by the USSR.
And the government that you're now implying has more moral authority in asking for intervention... is the one that the USSR overthrew. And you're also justifying the overthrow. So that moral authority obviously counts for jack shit to you anyway.
These factors are only important to you when it's convenient.
Some prime apologia for regime change. I could almost be reading a justification for the US in Iraq.