so the only option was pull out or continue with the sunk cost fallacy of thinking we can somehow fix Afghanistan by doubling down with another troop surge. I'm glad we are finally admitting it was a failure
Tax enough to pay for the effort but not for a "profit". Build infrastructure by bringing outside expertise to train and build local business. Take control of schools, make them safe and required for all children. Respect the local culture but smash hard some cultural practices.
Would it be incredibly hard to do without abuse? Absolutely. Is it questionably moral? Absolutely. Could it even be done at all? Questionable.
We keep acting that the outcome of every military conflict is going to be like the liberation of France in WWII, kill the "bad guys" and then champagne and croissant parades with the locals.
The repeated failed attempts at just handing self-government to nations after we depose their governments shows that you can't just win wars and fix problems with force alone. War is awful, it should happen as infrequently as possible, but if you're going to do it, you better have a plan for winning the peace. Corrupt, half-assed nation building doesn't cut it.
These are not merely in tension, but actually completely incompatible. We can respect local culture or try to impose one that we like better, but you can't do the first and also the second.
> Would it be incredibly hard to do without abuse?
No, it would be abuse.
> Is it questionably moral?
No, again, it is unquestionably immoral.
> War is awful, it should happen as infrequently as possible, but if you're going to do it, you better have a plan for winning the peace.
Sometimes, you just need to accept winning the war. Disrupting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and providing a deterrent for the Taliban letting a similar group base out of there in the future was a win. The fantasy of then forcibly-but-on-the-cheap implanting a pro-Western liberal democratic regime and society in Afghanistan was...insane. Unrealistic fantasies about “winning the peace” we could do with fewer of.
Japan and the Marshall plan are not a million miles from being an example of the change being proposed. A lot of differences though.
Edit: it used to say Martial plan. Sort of a funny error.
Neither the Marshall Plan nor the post-WWII occupations of Japan were within a million miles of “actual imperial rule for a couple of generations”. The post-war occupation of Germany on paper kind of resembles that, but that's largely a side effect of the subsequent Cold War.
We’ve tried an imposed system from an occupying US force in Afghanistan longer than we did i Japan. Or Germany, in any real way.
It might have worked if we had made the right decisions early on, but successful occupation is path-dependent, you screw it up and you don't get to start over with a clean slate, and the evidence is that we didn't do it right from the outset, if there was a “right” open in the particular circumstances.
You can very much respect the local culture while smashing out and cultural practices. For example, key to culture is language and so promoting local language is important. Likewise, the treatment of women in some middle East countries is oppressive and so promoting inclusion as an alternative (preferred) cultural norm is ideal. Same with child marriage.
Know, you can't “smashing cultural practices” is not respecting local culture, its imposing your preferred alternative.
I’m not saying its wrong in all cases, I’m saying you are engaging in doublethink of the highest order if you maintain that it is compatible with respecting the culture.
Literally killing minority groups while destroying century old or millennia old artifacts and museums.
It's doublethink to suggest that the Americans were in the wrong here. The Taliban are a powerful for with local support, but I hope that the temporary peace we offered the Afghani for the past few years will be remembered.
We probably pushed too many of our values. We shouldn't have made a democracy or pushed women's rights as much. The bar was set to high. We should have been happy with simply the removal of the Taliban and laser focused upon that goal.
Those rights that we believe in (but they don't) will be the first thing to fall. So pushing their morals in our image is just a mistake entirely.
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The Taliban are a group that literally bans females from reading or using smartphones, and they get popular support from the people. At some point, we have to just admit that it's what their population prefers. And we are coming in talking about democracy and giving their mostly illiterate women the right to vote. Of course they won't like us.
Admitting that you are merely “respecting” the elements of the culture that don't conflict strongly with your cultural values but not the ones that do clash isn’t doublethink.
Thinking that you are respecting the cultural as a whole while you campaign to eliminate the elements of it that offend your cultural values, however, is.
Well, we already decided a long time ago that we knew better than the Afghans how to run their own society. This would be an improvement in that we’d actually have the decency to do something about it.
If you want good self-government of a people, then you must eliminate tribal/clan structures so that advantages aren't given to uncles/cousins, but rather to people independent of their relations.
* https://ideas.repec.org/p/sfu/sfudps/dp17-17.html
* https://www.u4.no/publications/the-kinship-in-public-office-...
* https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=...
* https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055415000271
How much of a tribal/clan culture is present in Afghanistan?
The current GDP of Afghanistan is about 70 billion USD (Wikipedia).
So you would need to have taxed Afghanistan about 70% their yearly GDP for the last 20 years just to pay for the occupation.
Needless to say, people don't typically appreciate having to pay their occupiers.
You are trying to breed out extremism? It's not like a fad... You can never breed it out. A couple generations? No. Not even 5 generations will be enough.
Right now we are sending 3000 troops in for evacuations, and I don't think this is the last time we'll have troops in there. If the Taliban completes a significant enough takeover of Afghanistan then (in my opinion) it's just a matter of time before some action prompts US or some coalition of forces to return.
To what end? The security threat has been mitigated. The energy dynamic has changed with Aramco’s listing, fracking and bona fide renewable energy.
We are, first and foremost, a naval power. Afghanistan is a shitty buffer state. Our ports and coastal bases more than suffice for the foreseeable future in that region.
I'm just guessing here and I'm no expert but it just seems like maintaining the base would cost not much when compared to its usefulness in even just counter terror operations (not in the broad sense where innocents are hurt but like actual raids on specific leaders, baghdadi, bin laden, etc [though i dont think the baghdadi raid originated from bagram])
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Ope...
These risk calculations of “not many personnel” have American boys and girls on the receiving end, who spend 18-20 months to do what, maintain presence?
Two notes then: - already been tried as a course of action in the last several years. The problem then and in this future hypothetical is that the mission creeps. If you watched American KIA in AFG the last few, youd start to notice deaths that come from patrolling and convoys. There is no scenario where Americans stay on Bagram only and ever. Even If Kabul is in fact surrounded, you’d have risks just the same but with a fighting force at Bagram completely unable to respond because it’s undermanned and without a clear mission (enter in: Somali 1992).
- let’s say it’s an accepted risk though. how that model works in reality is long term, sustained presence. The desire impact of a long term Bagram is achieved by lengthy relationships with locals. The army model is 18 month rotations. This doesn’t build that relationship. There is a reason the last instances the US had really succeeded at war was “go to Berlin, come back when the Nazis are gone.” This stuff takes a very sustained presence to achieve, including leadership not leaving every 18 months. So which unit gets to live in AFG full time, in this long term Bagram scenario? Bc if it’s not done that way, you get the life disrupting/ending shadow war of 2016-2021.
A lot of this has been in support of some questionable regimes and has probably exacerbated the dysfunction.
I think it is difficult to compare Germany and Afghanistan.
I am French and if we had a US base here people would not be happy but it ultimately would have been a topic during elections.
The soldiers wood blend in and the cultural difference between the US and Germany << US - Afghanistan.
South Corea is an exotic country for us, but this is many food, entertainment, on the surface at least.
I do not think that US soldiers wood blend in, or at least naturally incorporate into Afghanistan, there are too many differences.
Just compare how and where the youth spend their time. In France, Germany, SK out Japan this wood be tiktok, listening to pretty much the same music (we had the kpop wave here...). In Afghanistan this is probably vastly different
Not saying Iraq and Afghanistan weren't unnecessary and expensive. The U.S. and the world would have been better off without them, probably. Saddam and the Taliban, Isis, Al Qaida don't look so dangerous in retrospect. But Islamic "extremism" was the big perceived threat back then, and you could argue that it is less of a threat today, so someones' version of a problem solved.
WW2 would also have failed if the military had tried to avoid civilian deaths. You simply can't win a war that way,
Example: The government never bothered to renew the authorization for the global war on terror given in 2001 until like last year.
Mil works best with a clear mission - nation building is not a clear mission.
What doesn't work is fighting while also trying to build up a country, After WW2 Germany and Japan only worked because there was basically no resistance and the occupying powers could focus completely on rebuilding civilian society.
What makes it even worse in countries like Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq is that the occupiers have no understanding of these societies and are trying to impose Western values on them.
The average Afghan has never looked at US society and culture aspirationally. They admire our wealth - that's it.
Exactly - and that is because the enemy in WW2 was a centrally led conventional army. Defeat it once, and it just stops, it's over.
Look at it from the perspective of someone who has had their country invaded by a foreign power. In what way aren't those people traitors?