Are you okay with condemning 38 million Afghanis to indefinitely live under Taliban rule?
I care what’s going to happen to women, girls and educated professionals in the Afghan cities. It sucks.
I’m not saying we should stay there forever. But it still really sucks knowing what’s going to happen to a lot of people.
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Are they interested in defending themselves against Taliban rule? Seems like we’ve given them the tools to do it, haven’t we?
The Taliban basically moved into the power vacuum left by the Russians. For the rural people they were a welcome answer at the time to the endless highway robberies being perpetrated by the various warlords.
They do love opium.
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Apparently not enough of them are interested in defending themselves. It’s a problem when every Taliban fighter is willing to fight to the death while only the elite Afghani military and police are willing to put up any fight.
They just don’t have a national identity to fight for. Family and clan are all that matters to most rural Afghanis. You fight for them, or because someone’s paying you. Fighting for your country means nothing.
Just really sucks for the people in the cities trying to live a modern lifestyle who are going to have to go through this all over again.
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I agree. My wording was too casual. I should have said that many Americans don’t care, not that no Americans care. Obviously there are people that care. My guess is that the median American probably considers the withdrawal from Afghanistan to be “news” because they are shocked that America could lose a military contest, not because they are actively interested in Afghan politics or the lives of Afghanistan civilians.
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It’s not your job to stop this happenning and every time you try you make things worse.
Are you ok with 20 years more war and then returning them to Taliban rule?
Rather than spend a trillion fighting 20 years more war, I’d use the US military to help get anyone out of Afghanistan who wants out and move them to the United States.
That’s not going to happen obviously, but neither is 20 years of war and leaving them with a beautiful democracy.
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I don’t think the US staying is worse than Taliban rule.
Peace under the Taliban might be worse than war. I don’t think the second part of your question is inevitable.
If it’s so important to know what I’m OK with instead of what I think will actually do any good, I’m not really ok with condemning 320 million people to American rule either.
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Seeing some replies here I dont need to wonder why nobody gives a fuck about climate change. Why save a world where millions/billions of people are condemned to a life in hell anyway.
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For me, if the alternative is Afghanistan becomes a terrorism hub on top of this, the answer is yes. I don’t regret the decision W made.
War causes shitty societies. It dehumanizes and desensitizes them. Nazis wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for WWI. Killing fields wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the Vietnam war. Soviet atrocities wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for constant wars in Russia for that whole period.
Afghanistan had a relatively liberal society in the 1970s and it was undone by war (Soviet invasion). War created the Taliban, it creates talibans. It doesn’t cure the talibans. The cure is a generation or two without war.
War doesn’t breed liberal democracies with respect for human rights.
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North Korea has been without war for three generations and there is no end in sight of Juche.
Yeah, true. Cure is not foolproof. What North Korea does is quite an extreme and effective version of fabricating perpetual war. Nothing like that is remotely in the Taliban’s power.
History disagrees.
Are you saying that for the Afghani people it’s preferable to live under Taliban rule than under US occupation (if you want to call it that)?
Yep.
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