So what is going to happen to the Afghan special forces? Will they just join the Taliban to be the new military? Will they be killed? Will they leave service.
Where do we go for here? What wars are even acceptable anymore? Why have a charge “crime against humanity” when nobody will stand up to combat it anymore? You can argue about wars being business all the time but if you dont want to take the other step to condemn or ban any business that keeps this shitty living conditions around the globe its just an empty shell.
China does have a playbook for this, I wonder if they bring it out in Afghanistan. What it would look like is deals with the Taliban to build massive infrastructure (China is the all time world champion of 12 lane highways) in exchange for access to any and all natural resources. They run this system all over Africa. Does Afghanistan have untapped natural resources that China would be interested in?
Edit: Skimming this article here
and my guess would be that China’s diplomatic relationship with Afghanistan is gonna be a whole lot of “Hey bro need some help getting those mines working at full capacity? We can help you out and we just need a modest 90% of the profits for ourselves.”
I have some sympathy for them, at least here in the USA. Most where brought up thinking it was very patriotic to serve, and especially for the ones who enlisted within a decade or so after 9/11, were at a very young and impressionable age in the aftermath of 9/11, and many thought they were fighting a just battle. I didn’t start to figure much of this out until I was much older honestly.
A family friend lost their kid over there. All they do is talk about his honor and sacrifice so you can tell how his opinion was formed as a 12 y/o when 9/11 happened. Now there is a traffic circle named after him in their town with a little memorial, so more kids can grow up thinking how great it is to get blown up for corporate interests.
interesting vice documentary from a decade ago back when vice was good. Shows what an absolute shitshow ANA was, and why the local communities usually hated them. The commanders, almost all of them, would kidnap and rape young boys and make them slaves, and even kill them sometimes.
I guess what I’m suggesting is that mom and dad typically have some blame too, (even though it surely extends beyond the immediate family), given that the child grows up in an environment where the poor decision of a teenager can hardly be all on him/her.
Shit I wanted to join the army as a teenager. A bunch of people I was friends with as a teen did that.
My soldier-loving conservative parents told me not to. Of course being an epileptic would’ve disqualified me anyway. But yeah I was all gung-ho pro-Afghanistan war as a kid like my family was.
Yea there are factors like this that can contribute to young folks’ decision-making. Sense of purpose, access to future education, a decent salary–all of that can be appealing to kids, and the propaganda/recruiting machine goes all out trying to capture them before they wake up a bit about the world and the US military’s role in it.
They’ve been fed lies and propaganda for their entire life, I wouldn’t expect many teenagers to be able to see through that bullshit.
Some kids are just gonna rebel, but if you don’t raise your kids on nationalistic bullshit they might be less inclined to volunteer to go abroad with guns.
Yeah, John Q Public was overwhelmingly in favor of rushing off to the forever wars, I’m happy to blame us all as a whole for this fuckup. Never seen Americans so completely united as we were when George W Bush was telling us we were gonna get payback for 9/11. Cable news and the NYT get a special mention for cheerleading us on every step of the way, but really we got involved because we’re a nation of bloodthirsty idiots who never challenge authority.
It’s not good to heap scorn on the kids (victims), but the whole culture of “honor the service” makes this happen. People want to be honored. Especially 17 year olds.
this is a giant pet peeve of mine. most people calling themselves patriotic would cheer their own military every chance they get, but at the same time they would call a russian or chinese parade a disgusting militaristic display. and vice versa by the way. we respect our allies somewhat, but fail to see honor and heroism on the other side, even though it’s are quite clearly the same parts of the population who end up in service. military families and lower income from places of fewer opportunities.
i get that this is just a human or perhaps ancestral trait, and it really required a superhuman effort and retrospective for individuals to wrap their minds around. Doing it as a society is harder still. but damn, once you see the tribalism up close, you can’t unsee.
and the service propaganda doesn’t make it any easier. the people willing to serve are deserving of respect, as do the people willing to be nurses, teachers, bus drivers, etc. which are all functions that soldiers end up doing as well by the way. 17yo about to enlist ought to be told about that. and have a no-fault way out of the service, say 6 months or a year after enlistment.
i do appreciate that at least western armies have partially taken on humanitarian missions, compared to say mid-20th century, and we need that to continue. although if you asked rwnj about that, they’d probably call trmp’s troops to the southern border stunt humanitarian.
