> Does anyone in America actually care about what style of government Afghanistan adopts?
I don’t think too many people care out of compassion for individual Afghans, but the original reason we “liberated“ them was because the Taliban was providing a safe haven for Al Qaeda to train and launch terrorist attacks. The USA created a democratic government in the hopes that the troops could be withdrawn and the local Afghan government would maintain its own affairs and keep terrorists from operating in its country. There are many Americans that care that after 20 years the Taliban will take over again shortly after the troops are gone. Nothing changed, the next OBL could be operating out of Afghanistan and Americans got nothing for their 20 years of wasted tax money except thousands of casualties and a lot of broken families.
So I don’t know if too many Americans care exactly which government Afghanistan adopts, but I’m pretty sure anyone paying attention is disappointed that they didn’t get literally anything different.
Edit: to be clear, this wasn't me critiquing the plan, saying whether it would or wouldn't work. This was me responding to GP's prompt about whether America cared about what style of government Afghanistan adopted. Yes America cares, not so much about the style of government but about the outcome. They were told that Afghanistan was going to get a new government that wouldn't allow terrorists free reign to operate as they please; as a result America and the world would be safer. They didn't get that. Yes there are other places that terrorists could operate from, but removing Afghanistan from the list would have been nice. Yes, democracy would be nice, but America would have accepted if Afghanistan had adopted a limited monarchy ran by a Grand Poobah. What we're about to end up with is the Taliban running the government again and probably handing a few of the recently vacated facilities to terrorists as new training camps.
> The USA created a democratic government in the hopes that the troops could be withdrawn and the local Afghan government would maintain its own affairs
Democracy in the USA is based upon directly elected local government and a local property tax on landowners. We never tried to establish anything resembling american style democracy in Afghanistan.
Imagine if after each contentious national election the President appointed all of the state governors, all the county and city executives were also appointed by the governors or the President, that there was no direct property tax on corporate and individual land owners, and that the national government levied an internal sales tax.
The USA wouldn't survive more than a few years under Afghanistan style democracy.
>The USA created a democratic government in the hopes that the troops could be withdrawn and the local Afghan government would maintain its own affairs and keep terrorists from operating in its country
Lemme stop you right there. Even the idea of "voting" was foreign to them. You have to understand, we can provide security, but if they think democracy is stupid what do we do? Tell them democracy isn't stupid?
>There are many Americans that care that after 20 years the Taliban will take over again shortly after the troops are gone.
Yeah, No. I mean, psychologically it's weird to see the place we were at for 11 months get overrun by Islamists but at some point we've just realized that Afghanistan is their country. If they want to run it that way, with an Islamist political party running the entire government then that's their right. The US should stay out of it.
OBL was, in the end, operating out of Pakistan, a "democratic" "US ally".
It was impossible to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan because they could retreat to, operate from, and occasionally bomb US fuel supplies in, Pakistan.
The quest for revenge after 9/11 just gave the US two more Vietnams.
True but at least the US doesn't have the draft anymore so American society doesn't care much and life goes on unchanged.
When I read about an aircraft carrier being diverted to cover the withdrawal I couldn't help mutter "Saigon".
> The USA created a democratic government in the hopes...
Saying this is kinda insulting to actually democratic countries. Why would exactly the country with the most broken democracy feel to spread that? Did they ask for that? Did other countries ask the US to break Afghanistan the way they did?
I live far from both, and I do not really care. But bringing democracy simply sounds like a empty blanket statement that from a democratic perspective doesn't make much sense.
Afghanistan borders to many Regional-Super-Power-spheres to be ever left alone. Its between India/Pakistan, Russia/US and Belt & RoadStates/ Traditional Western Cooperate Colonies.
Bin Laden was in Pakistan. The 9/11 attacks were carried out by Saudis, partially trained in the US.
The blatantly false narrative about Al Qaeda should have died years ago.
The US has invaded Iraq and Afghanistan because this was in the interests of Israel (to control the countries bordering Iran), and US foreign affairs are largely influenced, if not straight up controlled, by israelis and/or jews (to the point that US soldiers in Iraq were simply called "the jews" by the population, according to Thomas Friedman).
The idea that Afghanistan was going to adopt democracy and western liberalism is so absurd on its face that I won't even discuss it.
Afghanistan probably had a better shot at a flawed democracy than Iraq. The country is decentralized by the very nature of the geographical obstacles it sports, and the Pashtun culture has a concept of collective decision making. Look up "Jirga", it isn't that different from other ancient decision bodies that predated democracy in European cultures [0]
On the other hand, Iraq has a long tradition of absolute rule by ruthless powerful figures, going well back to antiquity. It is much easier to concentrate resources and build a standing military to steamroll your opponents in a flat agricultural country.
If this was any other place on the internet, I probably wouldn't bother because it's usually useless (but this is hackernews, so ill try)
Jews don't in fact control the united states of america or a subset of it's government.
Jews don't control the world either.
They have various views on issues, politics, and culture. They're found in places all around the world, and like any other group you'll find good and bad. To say they control the U.S.'s foreign policy seems ignorant to me and based on an anti-semetic trope.
> The idea that Afghanistan was going to adopt democracy and western liberalism is so absurd on its face that I won't even discuss it.
Some people are just delusional thinking implementing a broken half baked American forced democracy would simply replace thausands of years of history that lead the the current country.
I don’t think too many people care out of compassion for individual Afghans, but the original reason we “liberated“ them was because the Taliban was providing a safe haven for Al Qaeda to train and launch terrorist attacks. The USA created a democratic government in the hopes that the troops could be withdrawn and the local Afghan government would maintain its own affairs and keep terrorists from operating in its country. There are many Americans that care that after 20 years the Taliban will take over again shortly after the troops are gone. Nothing changed, the next OBL could be operating out of Afghanistan and Americans got nothing for their 20 years of wasted tax money except thousands of casualties and a lot of broken families.
So I don’t know if too many Americans care exactly which government Afghanistan adopts, but I’m pretty sure anyone paying attention is disappointed that they didn’t get literally anything different.
Edit: to be clear, this wasn't me critiquing the plan, saying whether it would or wouldn't work. This was me responding to GP's prompt about whether America cared about what style of government Afghanistan adopted. Yes America cares, not so much about the style of government but about the outcome. They were told that Afghanistan was going to get a new government that wouldn't allow terrorists free reign to operate as they please; as a result America and the world would be safer. They didn't get that. Yes there are other places that terrorists could operate from, but removing Afghanistan from the list would have been nice. Yes, democracy would be nice, but America would have accepted if Afghanistan had adopted a limited monarchy ran by a Grand Poobah. What we're about to end up with is the Taliban running the government again and probably handing a few of the recently vacated facilities to terrorists as new training camps.