sorry I'm not sure what that have to do with anything we've been talking about? the point I was making is that "beating" the taliban or Iran or whoever isn't about literally invading and physically taking over a country, it's about regional chaos, murdering as many people as possible, selling weapons and gaining concessions, which could be resources, regime change, etc. In Afghanistan's case they accomplished all those things in the 20 years they spent there. In Iran's case it would be less about immediate resource extraction, although they'd love a regime change and access to what Iran has, but the main point is the same: the US can achieve a lot of this without any US boots on the ground, and at a great cost to Iran. This is why Iran has been bending over backwards for years to avoid such a thing, even to their own long term detriment. I hadn't said anything about the Taliban not opposing the US, or that a proxy is always required for manufacturing consent, but obviously in the Afghanistan context this was the strategy that was pursued to great success of the actual goals of the ruling class despite whatever their stated goals were to manufacture consent. The US is eating itself alive but it is already doing immense harm to others in the process and it could be very bad for Iran specifically, they are the next domino.

on the topic of the Taliban, the US had to pull out of Afghanistan because it was done there and it needed to free up those resources for the next thing, looking at it like "The Taliban won and the US lost" as some are doing in these comments seems very reductive to me. The Taliban inherited an immensely fucked situation that will take generations to recover from and the US moved on after draining all the blood out of them. What did the US lose, really? Some weapons and equipment that the current administration has already signaled will be an excuse to go back in and do it again whenever they feel the desire?

Luckily Iran is somewhat prepared to strike a lot of regional US allies hard if it gets attacked, and they just signed a 20 year agreement with Russia, so I have faith that they are organized and unified enough to weather the attacks from the US instead of going the way of Afghanistan. It is easy to be critical of Iran from the sidelines, wishing they would take the lead like Yemen, but they are truly the pillar of so many important movements in the region and enabling the technological advantage that would have never been possible otherwise. Yemen couldn't bomb Israel or shoot down US drones if Iran didn't make that possible. I hope for the least death of anyone in that region as possible as the US dies of auto-erotic asphyxiation trying to get off on the destruction of humanity. I also hope Iran get nukes soon before the US is done flailing.