Sorry, not trying to junior mod if that’s how it was taken; I’m just emoting. Carry on.
You’re not the only one.
I’ll say, based on what I know of those who’ve defended Afghan and few Afghans I’ve known who’ve tried to establish an Afghan nation, there’s absolutely no cowardice. It’s a level of bravery that is worthy of respect, a bravery I’m honestly not sure I have and not typically seen in the average person.
I’m responding to both threads for the record.
Well gee, there’s two threads now so I’m not sure where I should park this response so I flipped a coin.
You can be pissed that the US rolled out, think we are cowards, whatever the fuck but you should just save the wear and tear on your keyboard as there’s no need to argue that case further here because it’s totally irrelevant to the subject of the thread.
I’m going to help you out here actually and make the worst case on your behalf. Let’s say Afghanistan is a house and the US set it on fire with your family inside but on our way out we left you with some firetrucks and a warehouse full of fire extinguishers. Now, you didn’t want to be a firefighter but you’ve been through fire fighting 101, know how to pull the pin, aim and squeeze the handle on the extinguisher and maybe have helped hold the water hose steady in the back while the professionals sprayed down the flames in the past. Instead of grabbing the hose and trying to put the fire out you throw the extinguishers into the fire, run the other direction and hope you family makes it out because you don’t want to get burned and “Hey, I didn’t start that fire.” Is that a coward to you?
The reality is that the house is on fire. It doesn’t fucking matter who lit the fire at this point. When your house is on fire and you choose to drop the hose without ever turning it on and run the other way to let your family deal with the burns, if they survive at all, you’re a fucking coward. You can point fingers at the arsonists tomorrow but right now your fucking house is on fire.
There’re a million threads about how the US set the fire, I haven’t taken a position at all on who I blame for starting the fire so you would probably be shocked to find out that I point the finger at us too but I’m not going into that because it DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER. The Afghani’s laying down and handing their weapons to the Taliban instead of fighting for their families are FUCKING COWARDS. The MEN are cowards. I saw your little poke at my gender bias somewhere up the chain but I don’t care. I don’t think the women received years of combat training and all that shit so I can’t generate the same disgust for them. Call me old fashioned but I don’t care.
So fuck you.
Now, with that said, if you’re making the argument that the house ISN’T on fire and the Afghanis would prefer the Taliban rule the country because of their history and culture ok. That may be true and if so then it is what it is and the rest of the world should just accept/contain that culture like we do with other fucked up countries like North Korea then ok. But you can’t say “The world fucked up Afghanistan AND they like it that way so leave it alone” and expect anyone to give a fuck.
I agree that it’s wrong to call US servicemen who’ve risked their asses cowards. But you are so fucking wrong for believing that Afghans are cowards. You might have carried a rifle and ruck over there - you’ve got my respect. But they are not cowards. You are back home. You can leave. They cannot. You and I are posting on message boards. Several years ago – several years before our decision to pull the whole plug on it all – there were murders in broad daylight. There were abductions in broad daylight. The average person in Afghanistan accepted that death was a consequence of their cooperation with you and yours. You need to understand that.
Whoa whoa. I never made. A blanket statement that Afghans are cowards. I do not believe that at all. It take a lot of guts to live life under the constant threat of death and most of them do. I can’t equivocate my home life with theirs because there’s no comparison. They have it harder and somehow they go outside and play with their kids and walk down the street to visit neighbors, that would be very difficult. I’m specifically pointing at the individual Afghans who are charged with protecting their population. The men (yes it’s almost all men) who, literally, left their posts and handed weapons over to the Taliban.
This is not about Afghans as a whole.
I’m on a phone so can’t look it up but do you remember when Parkside got shot up and all those kids died while the sole armed police officer on site stayed outside the school listening to the gunshots instead of trying to stop it? That’s cowardice. Taking an oath/contract etc…that you will protect a group of people and then running in fear for your own safety when they are under attack. That’s cowardice. That’s what countless members of the ANA and Afghan Police are doing right now.
You think “cowardice,” I think “sin eater.”
I might suggest that you consider the possibility that, rather than being cowards, the men electing not to die to defend against the Taliban have done so out of rational self-interest, perhaps realizing that (a) what they are charged with defending is sufficiently indistinguishable from what they are defending against as to be not worth it, or (b) the Taliban’s resurgence is sufficiently inevitable as to make it a fait accompli.
Either way, the poor bastard charged with defending the police station from the Taliban isn’t the guy who ruined the country. We can sit here on our keyboard and pontificate all day long over who’s to blame for the situation in Afghanistan, but I’d wager the end result is that it’s not the people you’re accusing of cowardice. I’m sorry you lack the imagination, empathy, and compassion to grasp that.
I’m going to ask you two questions and you’ll just have to take me at my word when I say they are sincere, not baiting you or a trap.
-
How do you define “individual cowardice? I specify “individual” because I don’t want to get into political or organizational cowardice. When is a person a “coward”?
-
Is there anything you would sacrifice your own life to save?
@Cubsfan, Thank you for your service.
ASL, you’re an asshole and probably always will be.
How would 12 Afghani cops getting killed by 400 Taliban save anything?
Sorry I went a little overboard in my previous post.
I think @Snowboarder_Bo beat me to the punch: many of the ‘cowardly’ men in Afghanistan have known nothing but war their entire lives. I’m sure many of them thought about fighting to the death, but you of all people should know that the choice to the good fight or fold 'em and see what happens tomorrow is a complex calculus. It’s a rational question to ask: what has fighting the Taliban achieved for them? 20 years later, despite all the best intentions and efforts of the world’s most powerful nation, the Taliban is still right there in front of them, taking town after town. Is it cowardice, or is it just fatigue and the realization if you can’t beat an enemy with the world’s most powerful friend behind you, you sure as hell aren’t going to beat them once that support leaves.
Typically, I don’t concern myself with such matters.
You too, buddy.
Yep, it’s an old post, but pretty well in line with what I’m seeing @Cubsfan write about Afghanistan lately:
Yep, I’m the asshole. Probably a “pc extremist” too.
Thank you for your service, @Cubsfan.
Clearly you do since you so passionately disagree with my question that you started an entire second thread on the subject of cowardice.
As far as that old post you dug up it actually reads like something I would write today so I’m not sure what your objective was there. Even the poorest, most uneducated, tribal human beings understand the concepts of honor and cowardice, we all just draw those lines in different places. I happen to believe what’s happening in Afghanistan right now are individual acts of cowardice by the men who are turning their families back over to religious extremists without any resistance. If they never intended to perform the duties they signed up to, which is also highly likely, then they are also frauds.
This is why I parked my question in IMHO instead of stating my opinion as fact.
Way to dodge both of my questions though.
What’s better? Be thought as cowards, or continue to engage in a zero-sum game? The Russians couldn’t control Afghanistan, so they pulled out when they realized they were just spinning their wheels. We thought having Afghanistan as a War on Terror ally would benefit us somehow, but that required us getting involved in their internal political turmoils and making deals with unreliable warlords.
We could always invade and take over, but there’s no resources to benefit us. That’s been the primary purpose of war since the beginning of time: to take a resource from another country and invent a patriotic/religious reason for doing so. We learned our lesson in Vietnam. What good is bravery in a money pit?
And maybe, just maybe, when we chose sides in Afganistan v USSR we chose the wrong side?
To point out you’re a racist asshole, of course–or at least were at the time you wrote it. Thank you for confirming you still are a racist asshole by standing by your post. I might have guessed as much from your recent commentary, however.
It saddens me to no end that when veterans launch into racist tirades it’s “Thank you for your service.” When other veterans disagree, vehemently, it’s “You’re such an asshole.” @What_Exit
Would you have denied Tom Hanks the opportunity to get into Julia Roberts’ pants?
I went back to reread the decade old post and don’t see racism there. I see distain for a culture that is stuck in the dark ages and is allowed to perpetuate century after century thru fear mongering and suppression of the most human rights like reading a book or singing a fucking song. Or maybe you don’t understand what “race” means?
Doesn’t really matter though because you are willing to spend time scouring a posters history for juicy quotes rather than answer the most basic questions being asked today about your own beliefs and values. You should probably head over to Kabul and help them figure it out.
Hey, you’re the guy who’s got it all figured out and knows exactly what needs to be done. I’m just some guy on the internet who thinks the questions you’ve raised about cowardice and self-sacrifice are a bit more nebulous than you’ve them made out to be.
I don’t think anyone can say honestly, without it being mere bluster, what they’d give their life for until they’ve actually done it. At which point they can’t say anything to anyone anymore, seeing as they’re dead and all. Further, I think that many have given (or rather lost) their lives to (or for) things they’d rather not have.
I don’t see “coward” or “cowardice” as a particularly useful label because it seems too often to be Orwellian doublespeak for “someone who chose to live rather than reinforce my value system and make me feel better” or “someone who declined to give their life for nothing, thus forcing me to almost, maybe, have to ask questions and reevaluate my value system.” I use it here as a rhetorical device because some assertions (or questions, if you’re going to stand by just JAQing it with that post) are so utterly devoid of merit that they are worth no more than the mere minimum of effort to debunk: to reflect it back on the source. Can you distinguish for me how the accusations (or “questions”) you levy against Afghans–who lack the resources and the ability to withdrawal to absolute safety themselves–cannot simply be reflected back, and with greater force, against individuals of the US military? Does the fact that it’s not your own family at hazard–your family against whom the Taliban may direct their retaliation–somehow make you less cowardly than an Afghan soldier who is forced to choose between taking a stand to defend a system that he may or may not consider himself aligned with, put in place by an occupying power, and to hazard not only himself, but his whole family?