Do you think withdrawing out of Afghanistan is a good policy?

"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses"

If the Taliban are taking over again, then it is a simple fact that enough of the people of the region are comfortable with their doing so. It is arrogant and narrowminded of the US and the West to impart its values on a region that is not ready for them. Yes, those Western values might be things like gender equality, birth control, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and all the other things we in the West consider to be staples of a "good" society. But whether you want to refer to it as racism, colonialism, elitism, arrogance, or something else, you can't just step into a territory that isn't in a position to welcome those values and try to impose them. That's what makes you the bad guy in the eyes of the peoples who live there.

Think about the words the person you're replying to used. "what little stability they had" -- their stability is an illusion; after the end of their monarchies in the 70s, the region has been a turnstile of factions and fewer than 10 years of that time has the region fallen under the self-determined rule of a local entity as opposed to the US or the Soviets; it's not what little stability they had, it's what little stability we put there. And then to have the chutzpah to say that it's only under US occupation that the region has a decent government?

There's only two ways out of this situation: accept that the region's values are going to be pretty diametrically opposed to us for a long time, and learn to share the world with them and co-exist while making amends for our past 50 years there (almost certainly taking fire in the process)...or launching a full-scale invasion force and literally turning it into a US colony or state. This wishy washy shit of waiting for a culture to just magically open their eyes to the rainbows and glories of western civilization just isn't going to happen.

/r/PoliticalDiscussion Thread Parent