shipping weapons to Afghanistan, whats the worst that could happen?

I meant that they call us if they need a Taliban stronghold to be bombed. Shipping weapons there willy nilly is obviously a bad strategy unless you want to keep a region in chaos.

Weeeeeell, judging by the results of American foreign policy/interventionism over the past 70 years or so, rather than by the PR talk about WMDs and "bringing democracy to the oppressed people", one could argue that this has indeed been the intention all along.
/tinfoil hat





The Afghan police and military are both completely incompetent and corrupt. They can't handle shit on their own.
The reason why a few thousand Western soliders are enough is that the Taliban can't bomb them away without risking a backlash from a superior foe. They know full well that once the NATO troops are gone, they won't be coming back just because some Taliban massacred some Afghan civilians or officers.

In this sense, maintaining the status quo of a very small presence in Afghanistan might seem like the most sensible choice. On the other hand, the status quo remains unstable and keeps the country from making any kind of progress. At the end of the day, for Afghanistan to have any future, its own people have to kick the goatfuckers out. If there is one foreign policy lesson to be learned from the past 20 years, it's that you can't bring democracy, or any other kind of social progress, to a people which isnt ready for it.

I agree that Western democracy has failed for a lot of countries (including Iraq, many African countries, etc.) Many of these countries are tribal and would benefit from a highly decentralized government. At the end of the day, we just want to make sure that there aren't severe human rights abuses. The reality is, the current government of Afghanistan, which is superior to the Taliban IMO, won't be able to stand on its own without NATO help.

The average Afghani citizen lives in the stone age and hasn't even reached an equilibrium with being able to prosper agriculturally.

The Taliban is probably the best ruling mechanism, although we should step in and provide serious sanctions if the need arises.



The barbaric ways of life make up a majority of the population. I don't think they are anywhere close to being ready.

Maybe establish one or two cities in which some progress can happen under foreign discretion, but the rest of the country is stone-age level.

The Taliban is potentially the worst ruling mechanism. For many but one reason in particular. They do not allow women to be educated.

"In a systematic segregation sometimes referred to as gender apartheid, women were not allowed to work, they were not allowed to be educated after the age of eight, and until then were permitted only to study the Qur'an"

It's a well known principle that raising the standard of life for women in a society, will improve the society overall.

The Taliban are extremists at worst and at best they are stalwarts against secularism and women's rights.

Just to chime in and spell out why that is: Islamists model their society after a textualist interpretation of Quran, and the Quran is fully of gloating about the "remarkable self-restraint" of the Prophet who married his bride Aisha when she was 6 years old and waited a whole three years, until she was 9, before he consummated the marriage. Based on this precedence from the life of their prophet, islamists consider girls to become marriage material when they turn 9, which is why they have to drop out of school and start wearing a niqab or even burka at that age.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 21 2021 05:31pm

Mixed feelings about this. One side of me feels like it's great because fuck the Turks and what they did to the Armenians is absolutely atrocious and even in recent years their leadership and involvement has been repulsive so good for Biden to call them out. On the other side though, it's a really retarded move. Turkey is a hugely important partner in the region. We can't afford to lose them from our sphere of influence in the ME over what, virtue signaling? Even just symbolic gestures like these are highly damaging and we've been losing Turkey from our sphere since we aided and abetted that attempted coup attempt guy.

Putin is loving this.




https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/us/politics/biden-armenia-genocide-turkey.html

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Apr 21 2021 06:04pm

Now that's a move by Biden that I really like. Calling out the Turks on the Armenian genocide, and telling Erdogan and his followers to suck a fat dick if they dont like it, was long overdue. The relationship between Turkey and the West is as bad as it can possibly get anyway. From colluding with ISIS to invading Syria to blackmailing Europe with refugee waves to stirring shit up in Iraq to flirting with Putin to threatening Cyprus over suspected oil fields in the Mediterranean to beating protesters up in the middle of Washington DC, Turkey has been acting like a foe rather than a friend or an ally for many years. In my personal opinion, it's time for us to acknowledge that Turkey no longer is an ally we can rely on. Due to geopolitical necessities, they should stay a member of NATO - for now! - but other than that, they should be held at a distance and no longer enjoy a privileged relationship with the West.

One strategical aspect you are missing is that this is a good moment because Turkey is weak right now and can't retaliate in material fashion. As a result of years of mismanagement coupled with the pandemic, Turkey's economy and currency are in the shitter - they suffer from huge unemployment, skyhigh inflation and increasingly shaky creditworthiness. Right now, and possibly for the first time in years, Turkey needs the West more than we need Turkey. They will surely throw a fit over the recognition of the Armenian genocide, but the retaliation will all be symbolic/words; nothing tangible.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 21 2021 06:44pm