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Propaganda Frames in Current Afghanistan Reporting

War and conflict
#1

  1. FAILURE/CATASTROPHE/MISTAKE no, it was a SUCCESSFUL CRIME, a transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to the private pockets of those who control policy, the military industrial complex, not to mention the opium/heroin money.

  2. INEXPLICABLE COLLAPSE OF AFGHAN ARMY, no this was predicted by most every independent, informed obsersever

  3. OBVIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT SECRET DEAL NOT BEING RAISED the total collapse of Afghan Army and the lack of the use of either Afghan or US air power indicates this rapid collapse was part of the ‘DEAL’. That would at least be an obvious question to raise.

  4. IGNORE HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN TALIBAN AND CIA . Since the CIA funded the mujahedin against the Soviet Union supported socialist government and since the birth of the CIA connected Taliban 1992 who eventually took power until, for example, the release of current Taliban leader Baladar from a Pakastani prison in 2018 at the demand of the USA there have been documented connections.

  5. CURRENTLY NO IMAGES OF PANICKED WESTERNERS AT KABUL AIRPORT JUST PANICKED AFGHANIS

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#2

All great points, Everyman, agree with everything you’ve said. I’m also witnessing the careful framing of the rise to power of the Taliban, carefully removing the fact that they were completely created by the US and it’s proxies in the first place.

As Chris Hedges put it:

In April 2017, in a classic example of this kind of absurd blowback, the United States dropped the “mother of all bombs” — the most powerful conventional bomb in the American arsenal — on an Islamic State cave complex in Afghanistan that the CIA had invested millions in building and fortifying.

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#3

I like this particular bit of framing

Thousands of Afghans, among them the president, Ashraf Ghani, rushed to the airport in Kabul in an attempt to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of the capital. Three people are reported to have died in the chaos at the airport

Hang on… How did three people just “die in the chaos?”.

Oh yeah. This is how

Guardian article here

#4

Digging holes then filling them in again.

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#5

Another key propaganda frame: "The cowardly, inept Afghan Army is to blame!’ We should question this. Yes, the Afghan Army was mainly a fiction. But, the speed of the Taliban ‘victory’ indicates to me a ‘stand down’ order was given as a result of a secret agreement between USA and Taliban. Basically a USA supported transfer of power, but publicly a ‘blame the Afghan Army’ and ‘now we have a heightened threat of terrorism’ and who knows, maybe the Taliban will be in the USA soon signing trade and mineral rights agreements and the Taliban will send some of their well equipped forces to Idlib to help the USA destabilize Syria…

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#6

the speed of the Taliban ‘victory’ indicates to me a ‘stand down’ order was given as a result of a secret agreement between USA and Taliban.

Has to have been the case. The whole “oops, silly us, how did this unravel sooooo quickly?” schtick is about as convincing as an Antony Fauxci interview.

Kit Knightly makes this point, and a number of others, not losing sight of the narcotics angle either.

An alternative framing is what I might punningly characterise as Talib-stanning, much in evidence at Moon Of Alabama:

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/08/afghanistan-taliban-press-conference-notes.html#more

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