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| Afghanistan |
| Turning Feudal Afghanistan Into Switzerland Was Always A Fool's Errand |
| 2019-12-14 |
| [The Federalist] The most striking couple of sentences in the breathtaking report from the Washington Post about the West’s failed nation-building in Afghanistan were right in the middle. The report stated, in no uncertain terms, "Some U.S. officials wanted to use the war to turn Afghanistan into a democracy. Others wanted to transform Afghan culture and elevate women’s rights." Think about that for a moment. More than $1 trillion spent, more than 2,000 lives lost, more than 20,000 men and women maimed and scarred physically and psychologically for life, all to shape the semi-feudal Afghanistan into modern Switzerland. To do what the British Empire and the Soviet Empire failed before: to impose a Western idea ‐ developed and practiced in the West, with all the cultural forces that shaped it ‐ in a land which has historically never had a Magna Carta, a James Madison, or an October Revolution. It doesn’t even have a normative society such as erstwhile pre-colonial India, Egypt, or China, or pre-1945 Germany or Japan. The jaw-dropping hubris behind this idealistic endeavor was staggering, incapable of being explained in words. Forget about President George W. Bush or President Barack Obama, forget about the impeachment nonsense or the inspector general report ‐ this story of how administration after administration repeated half-truths while paying lip-service to norms is the most important revelation in recent years. But even then, it is not unexpected, nor will it go away unless the root causes are discussed. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #16 What's so funny 'bout Pessimistic Realism and Offshore Balancing? Apologies to Elvis Costello |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-12-14 21:58 |
| #15 Fire in the Lake An excellent book about the Charlie Foxtrot FUBAR that was Vietnam and how the know it all Ivy League elitists got us into that mess Some interesting parallels in the logic that got us into both fiascos |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2019-12-14 20:10 |
| #14 the Ho Chi Minh's of this snafu are sitting in Pakistain, just fifty klicks southeast of the durand line. A regular topic of complaint here at Rantburg, where some of us remember Ho Chi Minh’s antics from personal experience. Not me, of course, but others do. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2019-12-14 19:41 |
| #13 What people don't understand is, the Ho Chi Minh's of this snafu are sitting in Pakistain, just fifty klicks southeast of the durand line. Right now they are mentally divvying up the moolah to come in through the IMF loan this year. People in Quetta and even larger pakistain laugh at the Americans and lampoon the ease of bilking the west to feed jihad. One encounters it daily in their media, their conversations. But the urdu speakers in the US, intelligence workers appointed by 'O' and that idiot 'W' will not point that out for you. It's a convenient joke for them that Americans supply their own killers and sit with them at the table for 'talks'. While the Afghan bureaucracy and taliban collectively explain through 'Zalmay the divine' to Washington just how much more elbow grease is still needed in this fucking hellhole. |
| Posted by: Dron66046 2019-12-14 14:26 |
| #12 Let's face facts. Afghans are not Japanese. Never have been. Never will be. However, the do have opium. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2019-12-14 13:06 |
| #11 Afghanistan has been said to be the ‘Graveyard of Empires'. Trump said [and it was reported in the NYTs, July 23, 2019] that "he could have had the country wiped off the face of the earth but did not want to kill 10 million people.” What he said is most likely true but it set on fire the hair of many people here and in Afghanistan. IMO, what he said represented a truism but also a sane judgement about the realities and dangers of nuclear war. IMHO, Dangers for the U.S. today are largely internal and coming from a Deepstate and rogue and out-of- control radicalized left-wing element of government. Perhaps one should hope for America becoming the “graveyard of left-wing radical socialism [hopefully figuratively speaking]. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2019-12-14 10:32 |
| #10 But you don't understand! It was all carefully planned. There were goals and objectives, missions and schedules, org charts and timetables. Never mind that the desired end state was unreachable. We had to do something, right? You forgot the PowerPoint Presentations! SOY! |
| Posted by: Angereth Panda1824 2019-12-14 09:51 |
| #9 Afghanistan has a long way to go before it reaches feudal. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2019-12-14 08:40 |
| #8 Japan uplifted themselves. Chile pulled themselves up as well. Is there an example of another country lifting a third world nation out of the third world? |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2019-12-14 08:33 |
| #7 Here, the left wanted "integration" to break up tribes. Then they changed their mind and want extreme identitarianism (for everyone except whites) In the rest of the world, the more barbarous the quaint local customs are, the more on board the lefties are. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-12-14 08:01 |
| #6 My point is what feudal culture built on the premise of loyalty/obligation extending to non relatives and depending on their actions NOT their degree of relatedness. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-12-14 06:33 |
| #5 Interesting in that the Japanese solution was to divide up the western model into the pre-Meiji clan lines. The most powerful got the army, second got the navy (not applicable to Afghanistan, but maybe the air force), others got certain industries, institutions, etc. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2019-12-14 06:23 |
| #4 Actually, turning a feudal country into industrialized should be possible cf. Japan. The problem with Afghanistan, and the rest of Dar, is that they're tribal cultures under a thin veneer of whatever is currently popular. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-12-14 05:16 |
| #3 But you don't understand! It was all carefully planned. There were goals and objectives, missions and schedules, org charts and timetables. Never mind that the desired end state was unreachable. We had to do something, right? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2019-12-14 04:45 |
| #2 Changing Afghanistan would have been a fool's errand had it been tried. Appeasement by paying danegeld and importing an alien tyrannical culture's norms into Western nations was the actual political consensus strategy after 9/11. Also a failure. |
| Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 2019-12-14 04:26 |
| #1 elevate women’s rights Yeah, the systerhood has been all in on that every step of the way /sarc |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-12-14 04:20 |