Oh is that all it’s going to take? 50 years sounds kind of optimistic.
No, not really. Look at the changes in (say) Mexico in fifty years, or for that matter Japan, Korea, Thailand, and of a number of other countries.
Those that are more Pashtun nationalists than religious. In any case, on whomever can deliver the goods.
So you say.Understood you understand the Taleban as Bogeymen. Real human beings however, and real movements have anchors.
Al Qaeda are the fellows actively organised around Ben Laden et al. Anyone running a camp for terror training like Al Qaeda did in the old days.
Well Gosh, people are not nice in the world.
“Their clutches” is fellow Afghans and it is up to the Afghans, not the Great White Saviours to work out their cultural problems. No one, as the past decades (Sovs first, then Americans) show can do it for them, above all at the point of a gun.
Lots of bad crap happens in Africa, yet you’re not charging in there. Lots of bad crap happens in China, Burma…
There is just an ad hoc argument.
So in effect you have an issue with the entire structure of Afghan society - where except for idealised innocents (emphasis on the idealised), every actor cited is a “nut job” or a local thug.
Fathers, elders, chiefs, religious leaders… so I guess the only Afghans you find worthy are the Afghan Virgin Maries, ideal victims to hand your war on.
And you want your country and Nato to spend 50 odd yrs in a landlocked country to engage in the fantasy of totally rebuilding Afghan society.
What really is most queer about this idiocy is that is more or less exactly what the Sovs tried, witht the New Man remaking of Afghan society, etc.
Foreign social engineering set Afghan society back decades.
Yes, really. None of the countries cited are in any way comparable or lessons for Afghanistan. Not by geography, not by history, not by economic situation, not by anything. See some other countries with far better geo-economic placement make progress tells you fuck all about Afghanistan.
Do you really need to curse so much? Some would consider it a crutch and inappropriate.
Have we come across anyone willing to negotiate with us who can deliver the goods? Kindly mention an example.
Remarkably enough, people in Afghanistan are much like people in Mexico, Japan, Korea, Thailand and everywhere else. They want to be happy and free. Many people can see historical similarities in diverse cases. The West (not “my country”) ought to help them be that way. And on the same subject, why are so hung up about “Great White Saviours?” Your obsession with ethnic groups is puzzling to say the least.
But of course in long run we all decide on our own morality. If you are willing to turn your back on people having noses and ears cut off, being stoned to death and so on because you choose not to help, well, I wish you the best of luck with that.
Curse so much?
Why? I am unaware of any serious efforts.
Remarkably enough, Aghanistan is not like Mexico, Japan, Korea so pointless bloody bromides are pretty much without utility.
Afghanistan lacks good access to markets, is land-locked and surrounded by terribly problematic neighbours with deeply dysfunctional economies, and has spent the past 30-40 odd years mired in civil war.
It is also a deeply divided entity without national unity nor any signs of proper functioning unified national government, and without real infrastructure.
All this makes the bloody bromides about Afghans being just like other people pretty fucking pointless, since vague aspirations for greater wealth, etc. mean pretty much nothing when one hasn’t the environment to make them happen.
There is, in short, nothing rationally comparable between Korea, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, and land-locked, divided Afghanistan.
“The West” has a goddamned other set of problems to tackle, and “ought to help them” become rich and whatnot requires that there be something on the Afghan side as a proper lever. Outsiders, foreigners,
The phrase is Der Trihs, I simply picked it up, although it fits to your conversation. It is not per se “ethnic” but your simultaneous contempt for real Afghans and real actual Afghan society (thugs, tyrants, whackjobs), combined with a fuzzy appeals to saving the womenhood and other idealised victims does in fact harken back to the old Colonial ‘Great White Saviour’ rhetoric.
It is pure bollocks.
I have no Messianic fantasies or illusions about being able to save the world, and find your appeals to that tiresome - particularly as they’re used to justify what is at its heart a security driven occupation that really has fuck all to do with the Save the Afghan Women in the end. I’m sure that the Afghan women in trucks and weddings that get bombed are so deeply comforted they’ve been blown up in the cause of not having a nose cut off somewhere.
Some people enjoy blood diamonds and others try to make a difference in the world.
Enjoy your indifference.
There is no question a country can change a great deal in 50 years. The question is whether a country can move from where Afghanistan is today to where you say it needs to be in only 50 years. Saying ‘all people want to be happy and free’ does not address that. I don’t think medieval religious thuggery has a long lifespan ahead of it, but this sounds like the Bush-era view that U.S.-style democracy and capitalism are some kind of historical inevitability.
There you have it, wmfellows. If you don’t believe a half-century military occupation of Afghanistan will turn the country into a prosperous Western-style democracy, you’re mean.
No, not mean, just self-absorbed. The sort who buy iPods made by child labor. The sort who would not lift a finger to help someone else. Not mean. Just uncaring.
Paul in Qatar, you dont have to answer but I thought you said you were an US expat teacher in Qatar. Yet you seem to be saying you’re a soldier as well (and your posts certainly reflect a US military state of mind), could you just tell me what you are exactly?
Or they simply don’t buy your fantasy that we are noble heroes come to save the savages from themselves in the first place. Or they just don’t believe we have the power. Or like me, both; we are neither well meaning, nor can we reform a society by force even if we wanted to.
This discussion is turning into kind of a weird mix of ‘buy organic’ and ‘jump on the neoconservative bandwagon.’ 
I agree wmfellows is not all that concerned about what happens in Afghanistan, but there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about what you’re proposing. Apathy doesn’t have much to do with it.
I am not indifferent. I am realistic. I have spent most of my working career in the emerging markets, mostly Africa but other areas as well. I have learned to be deeply skeptical of well-meaning Messianic fantasies of either the Right or the Left.
Almost nothing parachuted in by the foreigners works, relative to social change. It has to grow up on its own. Frustrating as that is to people like the OP who want to transform everyone into little Americans and have fundamental contempt for these other cultures.
I personally believe that Anglo culture is among the most advantageous - imperfect as it may be - but also know that I can’t impose my preferences on others - not sustainably…
This well-meaning (superficially at least) messianic quest to transform the Afghans is in my view worse than useless, it actually actively impedes the Afghans from developing up on their own, their own modernisation of society and heal their own social wounds from 40 years of war. Imposed at the point of a gun, PQ’s vision is just going to continuously be discredited.
I enjoy my realism, it helps me from engaging in pointless, self-defeating crusades seeking to make the whole world just like me.
Rather I lack an active contempt for other cultures and have a greater confidence in the ability of people to be attracted to Western values over the long term if they are simply left the fuck alone. And that is precisely what Afghanistan needs, rather than Americans leading a oddly Sovietesque crusade to build Modern Homo Americanus in Afghanistan. If Afghanistan harbours terror training camps for Al Qaeda or affiliates, they can expect to get stomped on, else it is their own bloody affaire to build a new society and no one can do that for them.
I am an American teacher in Saudi Arabia. (I changed my name while doing a year in Qatar, and it is too much trouble to change it back.) I am also a retired US Army officer, where I served in the Infantry and spent a number of years in Panama.
Doesn’t his position really boil down to let people in Afghanistan be mistreated? I suppose it is the easy way, but it is not the easy way out.
The Afghan people were mistreated before the invasion and they’re still being mistreated.
So perhaps we ought to change that. What do you think?
Sorry, but to the unenlightened, narcissistic libs, any effort or expense directed at others is effort and expense not spent on them.
It would be too difficult (aw, it’s hard, my pussy hurts! :rolleyes:), time consuming and expensive to fulfill globally recognized moral obligations when we as a nation are the only ones really practically capable of shouldering the lion’s share of the burden and leading the rest of the civilized world into a better place.
Bunch of whining crybabies. It’s too hard! I want to go home and take my toys with me! Wah, wah ,wah.
Grow up people, and get with the neo-conervative program (sic).
No, my position boils down to the core observation that foreigners - in particular those who look down their noses at Afghan culture with contempt dressed up as ‘concern’ - have little real potential to effect change in a society.
It boils down to the view that internal Afghan problems are best resolved by Afghans themselves, so that they can come to a Afghan-sustainable cultural consensus, and that their culture can evolve at their own speed best, in particular best without foreign soldiers of your sort of point of view “helping them” become little Americans.
So you want to give them a few more centuries…
What the heck; you just want to let them keep doing what they have been doing? OK, so noted.