Comment by guerrilla
17 hours ago
The US hasn't left Afghanistan alone. They were driven out of the country by force. They are still attacking it in multiple different ways and will continue to do so until they are defeated. Time did not end when the US was kicked out. They aren't just going to give up their goals.
I do not understand what argument you are trying to make. Nowhere do I say that time stands still or that the US doesn't still have a policy for Afghanistan. I'm saying that the US (and her allies, my country among them), with their war machine the likes of which has never been seen, could not bring peace and democracy to Afghanistan. Once we left, and we will always have to leave eventually, the existing structures of opression once again asserted themselves.
My country and my Government, sent people from my generation down there to die. My countrymen died in that war, and the only thing we got out of it was more enemies in the region. The Afghan is still getting persecuted for styling their beard wrong, and the Afghan woman is still getting opressed. We have nothing to show for that sacrifice.
I see no reason to believe the same thing isn't going to happen in Iran.
> with their war machine the likes of which has never been seen, could not bring peace and democracy to Afghanistan.
As far as i understand, the US propped up an unpopular governmet that many of the locals did not like (there were rumours about turning a blind eye to moral impropriety because it was politically expediant).
The thing about democracy is its not really democracy when forced from the outside.
> As far as i understand, the US propped up an unpopular governmet that many of the locals did not like
From what I've read it's not that simple. The American system was more well liked in the cities than the alternatives. Outside the big cities, which is most of Afghanistan, the government really didn't matter much. They were still dominated by local malitias, "elders", and gangs.
To add insult to injury, the US led effort to build up an internal defense force in the country found that the only people willing to fight for the country were the very same people who had fought for the Taliban only years before.
The question left unsaid of course is if all of these problems could have been solved by a more competent actor. I would argue they couldn't have, that you can't bring peace through war, but reasonable minds can disagree.
> Once we left, and we will always have to leave eventually, the existing structures of opression once again asserted themselves.
The US keeps coming back is what I'm saying. The US was kicked out of Iran in 1953. That's what all this is about. They will do the same to Afghanistan eventually. That's what I meant by time didn't stop. The Taliban isn't safe by any means. It's just a temporary reprieve.