…gave you Afghanistan.The view from Europe: “Few will gang up on the U.S. for finally stopping a failed enterprise." But in the longer term, “the notion that you cannot count on the Americans will strike deeper roots because of Afghanistan.’’ @StevenErlanger https://t.co/9V5CYCF0I7
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) August 13, 2021
Why would the world think we can’t be counted on; when so clearly we can.
To keep doing the same thing, expecting a different result.
I somehow suspect that the post-Soviet Union doesn't spend nights up worrying that it can't be counted because it pulled out of the place. I think it was William Sloane Coffin who pointed out that every single country that got involved with trying to save Afghanistan from the Afghanis and their neighbors has found it a quagmire. As much as I am sorry for the Women and others who will suffer enormously, twenty years is as much as another country can be expected to change them when they don't want to change, by and large. We can't even change ourselves, still churning the same domestic evils as in the 1780s, 1850s, 1890s, 1950s 1970s Under the racist presidencies of Reagan, Bush I, Bush II Trump . . . Maybe they would more productively spend their time worrying about how we,here can stop killing and oppressing Black People, Native People, Latinos, Women LGB especially T and Q people right here.
ReplyDeleteThe entire punditocracy needs to re-read Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King," at a minimum.
ReplyDeleteAnd then shut the fuck up.
The British had the largest empire the world has ever seen. And they couldn't subdue Afghanistan. Our only reason to be there was to punish the Taliban for housing Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is a distant memory. How'd our punishment work out?
And why did all those people, American and Afhanis, die?