I've served there and this hurts. I'm scared to think what will happen to the women of Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
Look... Afghanis have had more than a decade to organize for the eventuality of TAliban take over. They could have done reasonable things while having a democratically elected government, like arming all citizens, forming organized militias, etc. This would have lead to a citizenry actually able to fight. That they did not and that the citizenry is doing nothing to stop the Taliban indicates that the Taliban are more popular than the government.
From my perspective as a Westerner, that is very sad. But it's not my country.
I am skeptical this was the "right" path, broadly defined. Democracy was completely foreign to them, conflicted with their deeply hierarchical tribal structure, and was extremely difficult to administer in a country as geographically and culturally diverse as Afghanistan is. If Kharzi had appointed himself King of Afghanistan we probably would've had more luck.
Source: was an 11A there in 2012
Yes, it was the wrong path. I am sceptical too. But even with some modicum of a different government, they were uninterested in doing anything to actually prevent the taliban.
Maybe I'm wrong and we'll see them finally re-align to fight against them. But... I'm not holding my breath.
Sorry, you lost me here. This isn't some variable we are optimizing for whose program we get to iterate over.
>they were uninterested in doing anything to actually prevent the taliban.
I learned this lesson the hard way, but a lot of people today (I see you, ex-State Department twitter) seem to not get it that sometimes people will choose a government that makes people in the west uncomfortable. What do we do, invade again?
And yes I totally get the frustration with he state department. I have a neighbor whose son is a state department employee in Burma. And I'm just listening to this guy talk about his son like he's some hero that will singlehandedly save the Burmese from themselves. He talks about how his son has been influencing all these politicians to make a better government more amenable to american interests, blah blah blah. As the child of immigrants from a British colony, I'm just sitting here shaking my head, and frankly I pity that he doesn't realize that the majority of the Burmese likely think his son and people like him interfering in their governance are the problem.
The tragic part is that the coup ended up killing a lot of the people the son interacted with in his quest to impose american norms on Burma. As a diplomat, he himself bears none of the actual pains of course. And I'm sure the state department accomplished it's goal. America treats other countries as disposable. It's gross. Time to leave these foreign interventions completely.