this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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The largest military in the world occupied their country and gave them billions in equipment to keep it and they let the taliban retake everything in weeks. I don't think there is going to be any better opportunity then that. It's obvious that the fighting population already made their choice, and now everyone just has to enjoy it.
Of course there’s a better opportunity: figuring it out for themselves. Having some rich stranger give you a bunch of stuff is a recipe for failure. Building what you have slowly and steadily is a recipe for success.
Hopefully we can stay out of their way and stop trying to give them level 50 gear when they’ve level 1 noobs. Best way to guarantee someone stays a noob is to remove them their game and try to place them into your own.
I sure hope your right, but we did not just give them stuff and tell them to figure it out, we trained them for 20 years, with the most experienced soldiers in the world. It's obviously a motivation and culture issue, so maybe after they realize how shit things have gone they may make a change, but I am not holding my breath.
The US invasion of Afghanistan basically paused Afghani political progress for 20 years, because they were too busy fighting a foreign invader. Doesn't help that the US-backed government was famously corrupt. Change in the Afghani political sphere was always going to start after, not before, the US pulled out of Afghanistan.
We gave them that training. They didn't earn it. They didn't seek it, nothing. And because it wasn't something that they earned, they squandered it.
We're enabling them. We're not doing the most helpful thing by giving them all this hardware and training. The most helpful thing would be sending them a bunch of LSD microdose pills.
Sure, blame the Afghan civilians after bombing their country back to the stone age and then trying to occupy it for 20 years with said largest military in the world only to pull THAT rug out from under them with a sudden bungled withdrawal.
It's not like the West had anything to do with the Taliban taking power in the first place, right? Right?