04 January 2019

The Revisionist

On Tuesday, Donald Trump convened a cabinet meeting and, as usual, everyone in attendance babbled fawning praise for none other than Trump himself after his prodding.

About half way through the meeting, which was televised, Trump attempted to defend his decision to remove all American special forces aiding the insurgents in Syria and half of the US troops in Afghanistan, a policy which happens to benefit Russia hugely and many believe will be harmful to long-term American interests.

He then spouted out nonsensical and historically wrong claims about why the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in the 1980s (details here). "Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia," he insisted. "They were right to be there."

Nothing could be further from the truth. The USSR invaded Afghanistan to prop up the communist government there. Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the White House strongly condemned the action.

In short, it had nothing to do with terrorism.

Curiously, Trump's nonsensical babble about a fictive history is the exact same historical revisionism that has been spouted by the Kremlin and Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin.

Of course, no one at the cabinet meeting corrected Trump. Had Republican Ronald Reagan been alive, however, one can imagine he would have schooled the ignoramus.

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