Diversity Is Our Strength 
We've just witnessed an extraordinary, devastating moment in the history of the United States. In 2016, we promised that our coverage of a Donald Trump administration would meet the moment -- and I think it did. Throughout those tumultuous four years we never minimised or normalised the threat of Trump's authoritarianism, and we treated his lies as a genuine danger to democracy, a threat that found its expression on 6 January 2021.
Now, with Trump months away from taking office again -- with dramatic implications for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the health of American democracy, reproductive rights, inequality and, perhaps most of all, our collective environmental future -- it's time for us to redouble our efforts to hold the president-elect and those who surround him to account.
It's going to be an enormous challenge. And we need your help.
Last week, Guardian US media columnist Margaret Sullivan spelled out in black and white the threat to a free press from another Trump presidency.
"Trump," she wrote, "poses a clear threat to journ*lists, to news organisations and to press freedom in the US and around the world." He has, for years, stirred up hatred against reporters, calling them an "enemy of the people" and referred to legitimate journ*lism as "fake news".
Kash Patel, a potential Trump pick for FBI director or attorney general, has said, "We're going to come after people in the media" and Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump presidency, includes plans to make it easier to seize journ*lists' emails and phone records.
We will stand up to these threats, but it will take brave, well-funded independent journ*lism. It will take reporting that can't be leaned upon by a billionaire owner terrified of retribution from a bully in the White House.
The work starts now.
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I'd bet dollars to donaldtards that all these libshit papers/reporters openly celebrated in their gooncaves when DDR won
like half of DDD's presidency has been MSM desperately grasping for anything remotely relevant to whine about trump over even though he was basically MIA in his wannabe twitter echochamber up until the last 6 months
now they have 4 more years of job security lmao
amiright !chuds or amiright
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I just hope he won't throw Ukraine under the bus (and NATO by extension), that's the only thing that matters
Vance is also a creep and I'm much more worried about that neighbor but as long as Drumpf won't kick the bucket I don't think he will be an issue
Please Blumpf destroy Ruzzia and Putler and I'll become #Maga2028
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I trust someone will be able to bait trump into decisive action tbh
if not, his standing foreign policy is basically "this guy literally will start a real war to win an internet flamewar"
then all the shitactors like whinnypoo, puttyput, and kimmychun will have another
and vie for peace because trump is inherently unpredictable because he doesn't even drink and still acts r-slurred
edit: also he's even more unpredictable now since he doesn't have to worry about re-election so his metaphorical chastity peepee cage is completely off and just adds more danger in offending his pp ego
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Is Trump inherently unpredictable? Was it bad, compared to past presidents?
How he handled the Taliban was how a US president should handle their withdrawal: with the threat of drone-striking the leader's home if they attack any Americans. How he handled Best Korea was also good: you have nukes? So do we. Don't be stupid. How he handled Syria with a bombardment was reasonable given their attacks on US bases.
How did Obama compare? Well, he unpredictably declared war on Libya, and with the help of the UK and France, unleashed a civil war that got 10s of 1000s Libyans killed and has still been unresolved. This also affected foreign relations with other countries who were currently or formerly on the terrorist list, so there's no incentive for them to listen to the US if they'll be deposed regardless Remember that Khadafi got removed from that list for good behavior a couple of years before that war. He gave $2 billion in subsidies for a dam and other goods to North Korea when they threatened to launch a missile over Japan, which they did anyway. Much of the AFG/Iraq mess he inherited but also prolonged with greater constraints on US intervention. It was non-commital while it should've been a "get off the pot or take a shit" decision. ISIS was another crisis partly fueled by US subsidies of weapons to neighboring countries it occupied and others which had their Arab Spring and totally Moderate Islamic groups starting shit. Turns out they weren't
, especially the "Free Syria Army" which didn't really exist as a single entity. That was unpredictably chaotic and stupid.
Then there's senile Joe and god knows who's been running the country for him. The withdrawal went unpredictably poorly because Biden is viewed by foreign leaders as a weak, withering fool. Leaders of militaries respect strength and resolve. They know the language of credible threat. Biden and Obama both lacked that because they're pushover which also contributed to the Gaza-Israeli war and the Russo-Ukrainian one.
!chuds !mottezans, we need a geopolitics group, but what should we call it? I'll pony up the DC.
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!geodudes
!chuds !r-slurs
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Just write that shit out neighbor. Stuff like this is why mottelets will always only be chimpanzee-butt !r-slurs larping as intellectuals. Have some self respect.
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"Tens of thousands" on the phone is harder to type out.
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Obummer spoke really good and used bigly words when he killed oslama
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Idk man. They all fricked up, imo. The Doha Agreement was a huge part of this clusterfrick and led everyone to feel like we abandoned them because we said we would no longer support offensive operations. Following the agreement, the US stopped supporting the Afghan military in its offensive operations, cucking it to take mostly defensive positions around the country. According to the agreement, US military aircraft couldn't attack Taliban groups waiting more than 500 meters away, giving the Taliban an edge in targeting Afghan military units.
Diamond Sleepy Joe wasn't even president when this shit was signed. DDD extended the timeline for withdrawal because the Trump administration had committed to leaving by May 1, 2021. The rowdiness of the Taliban was inspired by the complete halt on USFOR-A conducting offensive operations or supporting the ANSF and ANP.
Adding to that, the sudden withdrawal without a good plan left a gaping bussy that the Taliban eagerly filled with their throbbing forces. The Afghan forces were not at all ready to handle the onslaught without daddy's support they'd been receiving for years. The morale among Afghan troops plummeted when they realized they were essentially being buddy fricked and left as an offering for Terry Taliban.
The buck breaking imposed on US military actions VRILed up the Taliban even further. With the US in the cuck chair, the Taliban had rowdy time to regroup, strategize, and execute their plans without fear of Burger intervention. This not only fricked the Afghan government's position but also shattered the trust between the US and the Afghan collaborators.
Now I just want to run my jibs on the GWOT, speaking as someone (a professional r-slur) who was sent on an all expenses paid trip outside the wire in both--we only ever half-assed the Afghanistan conflict compared to Iraq. While massive resources were poured into Iraq, Afghanistan often felt like an afterthought. The military strategies in Afghanistan lacked the same level of commitment and clear objectives that were evident in Iraq. This disparity in attention and resources contributed to the prolonged nature of the conflict and the eventual resurgence of the Taliban.
Afghans were also fricking
there were Afghan dirt farmers asking if we were fricking Soviets. Most are no-shit illiterate. The majority in Helmand had no idea what even the frick September 11th or the WTC were. They are absolutely not living on the same fricking planet as us at all.
And the installed
shillsgovernment? Ask the locals how they felt about ANP.Afghanistan is just bigger; its population is larger, dumber, more rural, and scattered; and the terrain is a b-word (pretty though). Iraqis mostly live around the Tigris and Euphrates except for a few out in shitholes like Ar-Rutba. Before March 2003, Iraq was a functioning state, there was an educated population. Guys were poor but you'd talk to them and they'd be mechanical engineers (a problem when they decide to build bombs). Afg has never had even a basic fricking level of national organization or sophistication in modern times.
In Iraq, there was a surge in 2007 that significantly reduced violence and stabilized the country for a period. Afghanistan never saw a similar level of focus or troop commitment, the surge around Operation Moshtarak was nowhere near the saturation Iraq got. The lack of a non-r-slurred long-term strategy in Afghanistan led to inconsistent efforts, making it difficult to achieve actual fricking progress.
We didn't put nearly the same effort into the war in Afg.
Afghanistan:
Initial Invasion (2001): Around 2,500 U.S. troops.
Peak Troop Level (2011): About 100,000 U.S. troops during Obama's surge.
Average: Usually between 10,000 to 30,000 troops outside of the surge period.
Iraq:
Initial Invasion (2003): Approximately 150,000 U.S. troops.
Peak Troop Level (2007): Roughly 170,000 U.S. troops during GWB's surge.
Average Deployment: approx 100,000 troops for several years before drawdown.
We threw way more bodies into the meat grinder on the ground in Iraq than in Afghanistan.
Now, money, from the Costs of War Project:
Afghanistan:
Iraq:
Even though Afghanistan ended up costing more over two decades(!), a lot of that comes from long-term payday loan expenses like veterans' care and interest.
But in terms of direct war appropriations:
-Afghanistan War Appropriations (2001-2019): Approximately $778 billion.
-Iraq War Appropriations (2003-2019): About $815 billion.
So, we shit more immediate funding into Iraq over a shorter period compared to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan felt like a fricking sideshow half the time.
________
Also, let me sperg out on the colossal waste of money and effort for a bit, I might do an effort post on this later tbh:
A space elevator is estimated to cost approximately $100 billion, with $8 trillion, the U.S. could have built 80 space elevators.
The GWOT budget could have funded 16 new Interstate Highway Systems.
Could build 8 complete national high-speed rail networks, or 9000 Hoover Dams, or over 800 Large Hadron Colliders. It would fund 20 to 80 manned missions to Mars.
It would take around $4.5 trillion to transition the U.S. to 100% renewable energy, the GWOT budget could have fully funded this change and still had money left.
They could have provided universal broadband access 50 times over.
With the $8 trillion spent on the GWOT and associated VA costs, the US could have constructed 8 to 16 O'Neill cylinders
(massive space habitats that cost between $500 billion to $1 trillion) and capable of housing approximately 8 million people each—providing living space for a total of 64 million to 128 million people; alternatively, this funding could have built 1 to 8 interstellar Orion generation ships
]to send humans to colonize Tau Ceti or other stars at a cost of $1 trillion to $5 trillion each, accommodating up to 80,000 individuals in total, meaning that the GWOT funds could have been used to put tens of millions of Americans in space.
An Interstellar Orion Generation Ship is a spacecraft propelled by nuclear pulse propulsion—a concept originating from Project Orion in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This ship would use controlled nuclear dets to propel itself allowing it to reach about 15% of the speed of light and can travel to nearby star systems over several generations.
And putting even a portion of such huge amounts of money toward space exploration and advanced engineering projects instead of local corruption could have propelled us into a new era of doing cool shit and not being gay like today
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I dunno, man. The difference between the two is pretty small.
But thanks for posting! I read every word.
There's no way they're that cheap. Whoever come up with that estimate is oblivious to regulations.
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It's actually really impressive how much influence the left has over its voters. I understand that it was pretty easy to paint Trump as the bad guy in the first election, but even after years in office of not being hitler and handling things in way that produced good outcomes they still stayed furious at him. That's hard to do, especially at this scale. Even after years of someone else making things worse for their voters, they are still furious at the last guy.
I just don't feel like Obama or Biden was able to sustain the rightoids fury like Trump has been able to keep the leftoids pissed off
Putting the
in
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Call it bimothy hello :marseywave
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The withdrawal went extremely predictably poorly because somehow nobody, not a single person in charge, considered the obvious consequences of various CIA, Pentagon, and whatnot officials announcing for the entire world to hear on the pages of newspapers of record that they predict that the Afghan Army would hold for at least six months. Naturally everyone in said army understood that "at least" meant "at most", and if you plan to fight Taliban for six months and either be killed or surrender, then why not surrender tomorrow?
This was institutional autism of such breathtaking proportions that I simply don't have an explanation for it. Someone in the Pentagon wanted to embarrass the State Department? Uncoordinated idiocy?
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It didn't help, and Biden was in no mental condition to mitigate such a problem or even work around it.
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😴😴😴
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Trump's own advisors had to treat him like a 15 year old teenager with reverse psychology.
Also come shitpost on /h/the_donald, we're larping as crazy people
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We only know that trumps tweets are unpredictable, not his acts.
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I just hope the NATO members pay for their fair share of regional security. That's really why so many EUtards dislike him.
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I do not understand how Vance is slowly overtaking Trump as the big bad boogieman of the far reich.
Dude seems pretty classic r-slurred conservative but Trump was supposed to be the end-all-be-all facism choice.
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homie u r right
It was the same with covid. Instead of having to go out and look for news they could just throw a dart at a fricking dictionary then shit out an article on HOW IS COVID AFFECTING TRAFFIC LIGHTS or whatever then pat each other on the back for being pioneering thought leaders.
This is going to be 4 years of exactly the same shit. It's the holier-than-thou hypocrisy that boils my piss more than anything.
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It's like when I open a new tab on mobile and it suggests an article from 3 days ago about "This 20 year old Futurama episode had a sneaky reference to an event everyone forgot about 19 years ago"
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I mean I think that's only true of some members of mainstream press. Their public meltdowns on election night and the subsequent days is not all just acting IMO. I'd argue most of them believe the nonsensical bullshit they spew every day.
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