I just finished watching this. It was sad. Like King Lear kind of sad. I wanted to cry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja5Q75hf6QI

ok I'll embed


Even worse, it might be prophetic. This is made fairly recently, going around Afghanistan. Basically they show two worlds, one is the one we hear about in the media, and the other is the reality there. It's a clear message that the government will probably unravel after we leave. That transition to chaos is probably beginning around now.

- they can't convict anyone in the broken court system, so capturing the Taliban is pointless..
- half of the police forces will probably defect once foreign troops are gone
- you can't believe anything the tribesmen are saying, they're just telling us what we want to hear because they don't want to die. That's their only real concern.
- In an honest appraisal, almost all police commanders keep young boys for sex
- lots of the infrastructure we built is pointless, it's just sold off and goes to fuel corruption
- even if that didn't happen, the pool of people for the police aren't literate (makes sense why cell phones are popular..)

Could this currently be a disaster in the making? I don't want us to stay there either.. but what is the plan? What if this war does "end" when the Taliban takes back control? Are we okay with that? What happens then? Do we repeat the war or do we sit back... and wait for the chaos to fuel a second 9/11? The Taliban is clearly stronger than the forces we're leaving in charge.

Is it right to just leave this part of the world to fall apart? It rips at my heart strings, although I admit I don't know what the right answer is.

[Edited on June 8, 2013 at 8:51 PM. Reason : ]

6/8/2013 8:50:45 PM

Yes, it is totally correct to let this part of the world fall apart. If the people there don't want anything different, then this is what they will get. We can't make them want a modern state enough to kick the Taliban bums out. It sucks, but that is just how it is. And if we'd stop pissing those people off by bombing weddings and funerals, maybe they wouldn't want to come over here and fuck with us, either. Blowback is a bitch, though

6/8/2013 9:05:24 PM

I don't know any logical person who doesn't agree. It's going a little far to say it's a lost cause, but even then we're just projecting our ideas of what a "good society" or "good government" is. It's hardly surprising if they revert back to the status-quo of the past.

You can't project the fundamentals of one society onto another and expect peaceful harmony.

6/8/2013 9:36:47 PM

6/8/2013 9:39:11 PM

Maybe we'll still set up an embassy there? I'm running through the plausible situations in my mind.

You have troops out, but you leave a facility that's perfectly well guarded with the most modern military equipment there is. Even if the Taliban does take back the country, maybe they'd weigh their options and decide to leave the embassy there untouched, as a symbol to appease the Americans to prevent another full scale invasion.

I can still see that eventually turning into the scene from when we exited Vietnam.

Is Iraq at least comparatively more stable?

6/8/2013 10:13:50 PM

Yes, but Iraq was never comparable to Afghanistan to begin with. Afghanistan has been a primitive, dysfunctional mess since the soviets demolished it 33 years ago.

We should have just killed a shitload of Taliban, blew up all the terrorist camps, and left. Rinse and repeat every few years when they decide to test us again.

6/8/2013 10:26:54 PM

^yep

The CIA already had relationships with the Northern Alliance and Ahmad Shah Massoud before 9/11. We should have fostered that and targeted bin Laden. Kill some Taliban in the meantime for the cameras and GTFO.

Nation building there is fucking pipe-dream. Poverty does not even begin to describe the hinterlands of Afghanistan.

6/8/2013 11:17:36 PM

We had relations with Massoud and the Northern Alliance for a long time before 9/11. We got involved in Afghanistan in 1979 and never really left, and we had significant involvement there for years before 9/11.

OEF originally was mostly an operation of special forces and airstrikes to support the Northern Alliance. It should have stayed like that, and maybe just become primarily limited to airstrikes (ISO the Northern Alliance) after some period of time. What it has morphed into is insane.

6/8/2013 11:46:26 PM

I have been saying for a decade here that you can't civilize a culture or teach it to be democratic in 10 years. Did Western people get civilized in 10 years? It is a natural process that takes several decades at best, but usually a few centuries. You can't rush it.

America is seriously stupid for going to Arab/Asian/African/S. American countries by force and asking them to start respecting women, letting girls go to school, stop stoning people, give people freedom to say and act as they please, etc.

It doesn't get any more stupid than that.

Having lived in an Arab country and having dealt with Arabs and Asians most of my life, I can tell you that for certain Arab and Asian countries, the process of self-civilizing needs at least a century, and more like 2-3 centuries for some of them.

10 years?

6/9/2013 8:43:38 AM

I think it could maybe be done in like 30 years. It only takes indoctrinating one generation to set the tone and not want to go back to living in caves (no offense to anyone living in caves).

But yeah, Afghanistan is fucked. We've known this pretty much for as long as we've been there.

6/9/2013 9:19:51 AM

30 years? Did you see them talking about raping little boys as if they have to do it because the other alternative, sarcastically, is having sex with their grandmothers?

30 years?

6/9/2013 9:25:52 AM

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a_time_in_afghanistan

6/9/2013 10:09:53 AM

Quote :

"Did you see them talking about raping little boys as if they have to do it because the other alternative, sarcastically, is having sex with their grandmothers?"

I remember that comment.

You could try to deconstruct it. In the lifecycle of places like Afghanistan, I'm sure people see sex as a reward to people in power. If you get a position of power in the Taliban, you'll probably have a few young victims to rape regularly as a perk. In this job environment, you're competing for the talent. This is why the problem is more systematic than just telling people "no, that's bad so we shouldn't allow it".

In fairness though, the Afghan who was negotiating about this said many times that it was not good. There wasn't a question about morality. Hey, that's better than the ancient Greeks at least!

6/9/2013 11:29:19 AM

I didn't actually watch it.

6/10/2013 8:35:02 AM

I've watched the first two segments on youtube. very interesting and pretty disturbing. they say that the vast majority of police commanders keep several boys who "give their butts" to them. and it looks like half the police force are strung-out on poppy.

7/23/2013 1:21:57 PM

the EOD team was funny.

7/23/2013 3:13:31 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/world/asia/impasse-with-afghanistan-raises-prospect-of-total-us-withdrawal-in-2014.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Quote :

" Moreover, a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan could be far costlier than it was in Iraq. It would force European powers to pull their forces as well, risking a dangerous collapse in confidence among Afghans and giving a boost to the Taliban, which remain a potent threat. It could also jeopardize vital aid commitments. Afghanistan is decades away from self-sufficiency — it currently covers only about 20 percent of its own bills, with the rest paid by the United States and its allies. "

Seems that we can only expect bad news in the coming years.

I just wonder if the Afghan state will become so completely destabilized that it will spill over. Over another decade or so, cause such a great event that the international community is forced to take control again. That's what happened in the first place.

10/5/2013 2:22:11 PM