Comments Elsewhere

Dobeln:

Plus, it’s pretty obvious Rall’s position on the issue is a ruse. Rall and his friends will cheer on any force that opposes the United States. Simple as that.

If they has to make up a halfway consistent position to cover their asses , they will do so.

Fine, but that’s not really to the point. Maybe Rall is playing games here and maybe he’s not, but either way the conclusion that he is “casting his lot” with the Taleban is radically undermotivated by the evidence which is presented in the post. If you want to make the claim that Rall casts his lot with the Taleban, or cheers on any forces which happen to oppose the US, you’ll need burlier evidence for that conclusion than an interview in which he declares the Taleban “the world’s worst regime” ca. December 2001. You can write off the statements in that interview as duplicitous, but then whatever other evidence that you have for considering them duplicitous seems like a more natural candidate to present as evidence for the conclusion that he sides with the Taleban than the interview linked here.

It’s also worth wondering what any of this has to do with anything of real interest. If Rall does happen to “cheer on any force that opposes the United States”, does that make his assessment of the evils of the Taleban and Northern Alliance therefore wrong? I thought that the truth or falsity of statements like that were established by an appeal to the facts of the matter, not by the team loyalty of the person advancing them.