Did You Catch What's Wrong with Rashida Tlaib's Tweet About Afghanistan and the Taliban?

I’m not expecting much from members of the Squad, but when you make a mistake this bad—maybe you should delete the tweet. Tlaib decided to hit at corporate America and American imperialist foreign policy when news hit that the Taliban were now back in charge, but there’s a problem. Namely, her historical timeline is off…by a lot.

“That’s what this is,” she tweeted. “The horrible consequences of endless war and failed US policy going back to the 1980s when we backed the Taliban against the Soviets. Innocent people suffer the horrors of war while political leaders and arms-dealing corporations sit back and make billions.”

That’s what this is: the horrible consequences of endless war and failed US policy going back to the 1980s when we backed the Taliban against the Soviets. Innocent people suffer the horrors of war while political leaders and arms-dealing corporations sit back and make billions.
— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) August 15, 2021

Taliban didn't exist in 1980s, mujahideen did and Afghans had a right to defend themselves against Russian invasion...
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) August 15, 2021

Next time simply use Google. It’s easy and may save you from the embarrassment that you are so much used to, as it seems. pic.twitter.com/AwnCrviKT0
— Michael Elgort ?????? ?? (@just_whatever) August 16, 2021

After a weekend of silence about this unfolding disaster, the Squad has finally figured out the real culprit here: 1980's anti-Soviet foreign policy.

(PS Taliban didn't exist in the 80's) https://t.co/idvmFNpIj3
— AG (@AGHamilton29) August 16, 2021

The Taliban didn’t exist in the 1980’s. We backed the Afghans who fought the Soviets. The Taliban formed about 4-5 years after the Soviets left and years after we stopped providing aid and arms. The Taliban were formed in response to the civil war in after after the Soviet war.
— Chris Manning (@Manning4USCong) August 15, 2021

Yeah, I’m, sure you all know that the Taliban did not exist in the 1980s. That was the Mujahedeen. Still a bad group of folks but they’re not the Taliban. Also, there was a good book on this called Charlie Wilson’s War, which was made into a movie starring Tom Hanks in 2007. Others noted the inaccuracy here as well, but the tweet is still up. In the era of so-called fact checks, this should be flagged as false.

Yet, the brunt of the criticism is going to fall on Joe Biden. Afghanistan has fallen back into the hands of the Taliban. They’re rolling into Kabul. Hamid Karzai airport is being swarmed by desperate civilians seeking to flee to freedom. There’s a ‘fall of Saigon’ feeling to all of this, which the Biden administration adamantly said was not going to happen eight weeks ago. We were going to stay, and the embassy was not going to be evacuated. All of that rapidly changed as the Taliban ran roughshod over Afghan national forces. It once again shows how Biden is just not capable of doing the job, especially in foreign policy where the man has been wrong about almost everything over the past 30 years. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates made that quite clear. And these clowns, the adults, remember—wanted to just take this week off as the nation collapsed? They were bullied into speaking today, which will probably place the blame on Trump. They could have gotten a withdrawal right. They didn’t. When people with a moral superiority complex fall, it’s brutal—the splatter. This could be a fatal blow given that Biden said a) the adults were back in charge, b) American leadership in the world is back (it never left), and c) the Afghan government wouldn’t fall. This episode shreds all three points. The government did fall. We’re running away. And the adults thought they could just hide in the attic until the dust of their screw-up settled.

We have losers running the country, and we’re not even a year into this presidency.