[remarkEon]

Unless those mujahideen were time travelers, no they were not the same taliban I was fighting when I was there. I’m well aware of the early history of how the Taliban developed as a CIA proxy war against Soviet Union. It had little to do with who we were fighting when we were actually there. It’s a Reddit-tier reductionist reading of history to laugh it off as “you were fighting the people CIA trained”.

>Calling them goat herders is either ignorance, racism, or pushing whatever agenda you’re trying to push.

I’m accurately describing the people I personally fought in this war. Good to know it’s racist to accurately describe them.

> Unless you're specifically speaking of the lowest caliber grunts of their infantry, in which theirs are nearly the same as ours. Mostly uneducated canon fodder.

I actually laughed out loud at this.

[s5300]

I wasn't trying to imply that anybody fighting post 2000 or even earlier is fighting the people the CIA trained.

I'm saying that today's Taliban receive training by yesterday's Taliban/whatever tribal spinoffs came from that who were trained by the CIA.

Is that anything like the direct US Military/CIA training? No, but the tribal knowledge of what was learned doesn't just disappear, it gets passed down.

Do you think it wasn't at all passed down? I too have more than one friend in the marines that went on multiple deployments mid 2000's-2010's. They seem to think it's a fairly reasonable argument.

I see no point in the goat herders comment. We don't refer to our basic infantry as former "factory laborers", "retail workers", "hamburger flippers", or "highschool dropouts" - all occupations I've seen go into the army, and end up as actively deployed infantry.

I don't know though. If you want to say the hamburger flippers got blown up by the goat herders IED, feel free.