If your idea of a successful socialist state is the USSR, the only pretend socialist here is really you, mate. It was just as much an oligarchic, imperialist state as the US; the elites in control just happened to be ultra-rich party members directly making decisions rather than ultra-rich capitalists buying politicians to make decisions. The average worker did not own the means of production; the party elite did.
there are criticisms to be made of the Soviet Union, but "oligarchic" and "ultra-rich party members" are so far from it. lol
But I'm not suggesting that "reluctantly going there and doing as all three of those leaders wished is imperialism or an invasion". I'm suggesting the massive amount of other shit they pulled was, which was entirely out of the remit of any invitation they had.
And yours depends solely on whether you happen to sympathise with the foreign policy aims of those perpetrating it.
Not at all. It has to do with whether you're actually doing something that will create or maintain an empire.
Pray tell, how does the US qualify as an empire where the USSR did not? (outside of the USSR claiming to support but not actually practicing your political beliefs)
You're clearly just annoying people at this point, whoever you are. Noone is fooled.
As regards Afghanistan, undermining a popular revolution by arming feudal lords and then benefiting from vast quantities of cheap opium (which the government they were undermining was trying to stop production of) is imperialistic. As is taking over and enriching your ruling class on the flimsy pretense that Osama Bin Laden was in the neighborhood.
You apparently think that the Politburo was filled with the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, so I can't say I have any care what your thoughts are on whether the Soviet Union practiced my political beliefs. I don't think what they did resembled what I would have for the United States, nor that they reasonably could have done anything like that because of their different material circumstances. But they did have a lot of successes that we can learn from and made many mistakes that we can learn from (chief among them the failure to change the organization of production to one in which workers democratically control their workplaces; on the other hand, I suspect that such a move if performed from the beginning would have resulted in the Soviet Union ending by 1941 at the latest for the very obvious reason you'd think of upon seeing that date).
They can't overthrow the government if we overthrow that government first!
The Soviet Union demonstrated its unworthiness at Kronstadt. Maintaining any faith in the benevolence or sincere socialist conviction of the Bolshevik regime post-Kronstadt is frankly deluded.
This is literally the worst way to do that. It’s like re-examining socialism starting with the Khmer Rouge.
Identifying the popular movement behind the PDPA and the Saur revolution with the authority of one guy-- whether it's Taraki or Amin (or Karmal)-- is quite deranged.
It looks like acceding to the Kronstadt demands would have severely weakened the Soviet Union at a time when they had just gotten finished repelling an invasion by several great powers. Ending up like the Paris Commune isn't terrifically interesting to me. The fact that the rebellion didn't spread beyond Kronstadt suggests it wasn't interesting to anyone else either. Should the Soviet leadership have been nicer about it? Yeah. But this is one of those instances I talked about earlier (and so precisely worded!) of making every questionable decision the Soviet Union made a referendum on the whole thing which is something we don't do with e.g. the US government. Why not? Is it because things are always more complex than that?
And social democrats demonstrated their unworthiness much earlier by supporting WWI. Should we deny Anarchists any credibility due to the tendency of syndicalists to become fascists?
I asked a buddy why this happened. He guesses that the vehicles and weapons were left behind for the Afghan army without the knowledge that they would just turn them over to the Taliban.
You're comparing unlikes here. Terminal (nor anyone else in this thread) has denied vast swathes of the political spectrum such as all socialists, communists, etc, etc "any credibility". The USSR, a specific nation-state, has had its credibility called into question due to it and its leaders having acted in much the same manner, particularly in foreign policy areas, as its geopolitical rival(s) despite claims by its own propaganda system (and posters on this forum) to the contrary.
It's a combination of the equipment being left for the Afghan security forces and the equipment being significantly more expensive to take with the US forces as they pulled out than to simply replace them.
He’s describing an event from before said state really existed, still during the civil war and while Lenin was still alive.
