Yeah, how about no?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/faheem-younus/give-afghanistan-schools-today-or-dont-blame-islam-tomorrow_b_2059098.html

This article has at its core one noble sentiment, namely that the USA, having broken Afghanistan further than it was already broken by a civil war that had lasted 20 years and counting in 2001 has a responsibility for the mess there now. It then goes on to argue that this should mean the USA should dedicate itself to nation-building, i.e. imperialism for those too squeamish and cowardly to use the proper word that actually belongs to this concept. The problem with this is that both the UK and Russia in varying forms, two societies nobody can accuse of cowardice or cutting and running also tried this. That the country's now in its 33rd year of a civil war indicates that the attempts before this one were utter, complete failures.

Now granted, whenever the US military in all its esteemed wisdom settles down somewhere, it only leaves if it's literally hurled out of there like the Hulk on Loki. This is a rather annoying pattern of US power politics that is less dodgy when there's no ongoing war in a particular region and the trade component of those bases at least ensures that it's not costing the USA necessarily as much as a sustained war in Central Asia would. We've waged this war for over 11 years and the lump sum of our efforts is that the Afghans have gone from wanting to blow up the Bamiyan Buddhas by themselves to using China's help in order that another pair are likely to be blown up.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/15/mining-threatens-afghanistan-buddhist-treasures

If after 12 years of wasting money on a war that started for one reason but now straggles on for the sheer inertia of war and the US military's twin inabilities to ever leave a place it arrives in and necessity to justify its perpetual stays, that's all we've managed to do, I would say that perhaps we'd best just quit while we're ahead and not have a repetition of Saigon when it turns out that the Taliban, now aided by ten years of war against us and once more consisting of 50% or more Pakistani Army regulars take over Afghanistan again and the Karzai regime's feckless and incapable of sustaining itself.

Enough is enough. The USA should just quit this war before it hurts itself and Afghanistan worse than what's already going on.

Comments

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Part of me agrees, if those savages want to live in the middle ages let them.

But the other part of me is just a little too much of a naive idealist to be comfortable with that.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

Then there's the part where you can't really accuse the kids of being such savages.

Then there's the part where you can't really accuse the average person there of being such a savage.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

That would be the naive idealist in me.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

When thugs rule neighborhoods, that's all that can be seen, everyone else is hiding indoors.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Then something should be done about the thugs.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So what do we do when our allies are the thugs and will resort to making up half or more of the fighters for that movement when we stop playing Catch-22?

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Don't look for allies, look for converts.

and treat all other would-be allies like Quislings that they are. The end goal after all is not to conquer the country but to destroy their culture and replace it with one more compatible with our own.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Which is not imperialism solely because we don't like that word. It's just.....cultural redesigning instead or something.

[notmrgarrison.livejournal.com]

And the Germans are imperializing us with their Sham-wows.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, it's about time a Germany managed to do something without proving a crap-tastic failure at it. ;)

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Oh it's imperialism all right. We just don't call it that out of respect for leftist sensibilities.

Kind of like using the term "Kinetic Operations" in place of "Military Intervention" or "Bomb all the brown people!"

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The Right has respect for Leftist sensibilities? I seem to have missed that amidst all the whiny babies bawling about how the country is ruined forever because a candidate they didn't like enough to ensure he won lost. I personally think the US Right has lost any connection to reality and will be having the kind of ruthless slaps in the face with wet mackerels that British Leftist politicians underwent for a while, but that's because if a party only talks to itself and exaggerates what ain't working, it's going nowhere.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

IE about as much as the Left does for the Right or vice versa.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So having to deal with two superpower invasions and 30 years of civil war makes people into savages, does it? It seems a dubious barometer, if we were being honest about the situation. But of course that line of argument would imply that anyone who suffers being on the receiving end of someone else's never-ending war would be a savage by default. I'm not so sure white people would like where that argument could go in a hurry.

My argument is also not so much 'let them live in savagery and medieval backwardness' as 'Well, if there is a cure to this, we can't it, so let's cut our losses and let things go to Hell. We did it once, we can do it again. And next time they bushwhack us, we just assassinate people with Hellfire missiles instead of repeating the cycle a third time.'

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

So having to deal with two superpower invasions and 30 years of civil war makes people into savages, does it?

No, savagery makes people savages.

The fact that they have not just lapsed into savagery but lost all knowledge of or desire for any other way of life.

And while you may see some kind of distinction between let's cut our losses and let things go to Hell. and 'let them live in savagery and medieval backwardness', I do not.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

As opposed, presumably, to Russians and Germans and Serbs and Chinese and Yanquis and Mexicans and all the other people who engaged in barbarism of the vilest sort for fun and profit.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Nazgûl.

You left them out!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Oh, right. The French. Can't forget those Wraithy French. :P

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Nope.

Though I suppose it would depend on the specific groups of Germans, Rus, Yanks, and Mexicans you had in mind.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Every iteration of the Russian state from Ivan III onward, both Wilhelmine and Nazi Germany, every iteration of the USA from the 1770s onward, as well as their colonial precursor, and colonial Mexico.