The Tragedy of Afghanistan:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

One of the sad truths that reality has confirmed over and over again is that what we think is historically unalterable or fixed is often anything but. Afghanistan itself is an example of this. This article describes the country as it was in the 1970s and how someone who knew that Afghansitan views the Civil War and Invasion-Wracked place of the present:


http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-19/world/afghan.untold_1_mohammad-zahir-shah-kabul-freedom?_s=PM%3AWORLD

Afghanistan, you see, was at one point a showpiece of women's rights and everything the contemporary West sees Islamic societies, and Islamic societies in Central Asia in particular as was not that but if anything the exact opposite. Women had the freedom to have their hair uncovered, to wear miniskirts, to do any number of things on a level that wasn't even fully matched in some Western societies of the time.

These are images of 1970s Afghanistan and what it was at that time:









The moral of the story?

Sometimes a seemingly 'primitive' or 'backwards' society that's been in a civil war for 30 years and counting really was affected by that war for the worse, and that war itself produces disturbing manifestations of a culture in the midst of a total collapse. Contrary to the fetishization of militarists and addicts to and lovers of violence in the West or in the 'non-West', whatever selectively defined and deliberately skewed definition that term momentarily has, war is not something that strengthens, it is something that destroys. Perhaps also instead of deciding that Islam could only produce the gutted, devastated Afghanistan of the present we should remember that the Afghanistan of the past was the one that had people who looked like this, where the Mujahideen who objected so strongly to this were quite often not actually Afghans themselves.

Neither freedom nor progress can come from the crash of the bomb, only death and impoverishment. A society neglects and forgets this at that society's own peril. It is also the reason that the genuine memory of history must prevail over the lies, myths, and cherish untruths that the elites of history erect about themselves, the veils they prefer to any kind of honest look at what people were actually doing even in living memory of people alive today. Cultures are not constant. Peoples are not constant. And war, regardless of what those who avoid it by virtue of who their father is or by virtue of boils on their asses say about it, is not a means of ensuring that change is for the better. It is if anything a surety that change will be instead for the worse.

Comments

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Seriously, quote me someone saying that war is good for the countries it's fought in. I want a cite.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Here's an article from the Economist, hardly a Bleeding Heart Liberal source:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/03/national-greatness_imperative

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

While I respect the effort, I specifically asked for something about war being good for the countries it is fought in. Afghanistan is hardly a good example to compare with the US, since we've not got roving bands of warlords unleashed by the fall of our central government.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The way the question was phrased there is no scholarship that would validate the assertion, primarily because most states would seek to avert war fought in their territories at all costs. Some arguments for maintaining US military presence in Afghanistan that I've seen argue this, but it's not a coherently phrased argument or one I've been able to find on Google.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

People don't talk about that part, just how it spurs technology and is some kind of necessary thing, or some other method of bronzing the turd that is war.

[vitsli.livejournal.com]

So...
These poor folks happened to be in between on the US and USSR, same as Vietnam and Korea.
Korea was half-lucky, Afghanistan and Vietnam were not lucky at all.

Some pictures of mid-20th century Iran are picturing it as quite a place of that time.

And what's the point?

War destroys? Thank you, Captain Obvious!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not quite the same, not at all. Korea and Vietnam were the subject of attempts by one or the other side to impose unification on the area in question at force of arms, Afghanistan's been on the receiving end of the Soviet and US military's respective most destructive firepower and neither have been able to use them well. Maybe it's something in the climate inducing the stupid virus.

[vitsli.livejournal.com]

I thought USSR came to Afghanistan and swapped the government there exactly to impose unification on the area at force of arms.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It was already unified before it got there. If it wasn't, what government was it deposing and how could any superpower allow such an endless chaos on its borders?

[vitsli.livejournal.com]

Somalia or Libya are also, technically, united.
Rhodesia was united once.
But what's exactly the point of your post - to leave Afghanistan alone or what?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Rhodesia was never unified, there was no unified state, only a pair of British colonies and some butthurt white boy racists who didn't like that they had to actually *run* a democracy.

The point of my post is that the Clash of Civilizations rhetoric obscures the simple reality that Afghanistan's problem stems from 30 years of civil war with 20 years of the civil war mixed in with no less than two invasions and occupations by two superpowers.

[vitsli.livejournal.com]

>>Rhodesia was never unified, there was no unified state, only a pair of British colonies

Just for the record.

South Rhodesia was a unified and independent state without apartheid laws, known as a breadbasket for the region and setting an example in economic stability (http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/news/24772/ian-smith-was-right-jimmy-carter-.html).
It didn't have _formal_ independence, denying the UK's NIBMAR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIBMAR) policy that would have obviously caused a disaster.

After a decade of heroic attempts to protect the country from Mugabe and Nkomo sponsored by both the UK and USSR, under UN embargo, with the US idiots Jimmy Carter and Andrew Young pressing on SAR, the Majority African Rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIBMAR) was established in 1979 and the whole country was effectively destroyed in no time.
Now it's a shithole with a local king Mugabe brought to power by the UK, US and USSR.
Exactly as Ian Smith predicted.
Featured article by Carter: Ian Smith was right (http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/news/24772/ian-smith-was-right-jimmy-carter-.html) - has plenty of lie though, not to mention that Jimmy is exactly the guy to "assume responsibility for resolving the political stalemate and the escalating humanitarian catastrophe" - because it all happened as he wanted.

This story is a little over 30 years old and shall be a good reason for all race-gender-environment-concerned activists to think about the consequences of their actions.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know what you're saying, yes. White people can run black people better than they can themselves, and Mugabe shows black people are inferior as opposed to Soviet-style misrule producing disaster regardless of the skin color involved. I have no interest in humoring the racist argument of Smith supporters.

[vitsli.livejournal.com]

>>Afghanistan's problem stems from 30 years of civil war

Too bad.
But we have to deal with the situation here and now.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You missed the "with 20 years of invasion mixed in with it" aspect, which means we're worsening the war just like Russia was doing. But since you're defending the Ian Smith regime I'm not surprised.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

One point. You said that neither freedom nor progress
can come with the crash of the bomb, but it is true that
sometimea such violence is necessary on the part of people
to defend themselves against oppression, end the threat of it quickly, and
destroy the institutions which perpetuate it when they will fall through no
other means. In other words, armed struggle, deed propaganda, insurrection and guerilla
warfare has a place in the struggle for freedom even though
many who have tried SOLELY through those means wound up failing or forming brutal authoritarian
regimes of their own.