Comment on How come nobody does anything about North Korea?
Krono@lemmy.today 10 hours agoSince you are still completely missing the basics, let’s do a little history lesson then.
The bombing of Afghanistan started in retaliation to 9/11. After initial bombing of Al-Quaeda training camps and Taliban headquarters, we asked the Afghan government to hand over Bin Laden. They said “yes we will hand him over if you agree to stop bombing”. George W’s famous response was " we don’t negotiate with terrorists". The bombing continued, and Bin Laden fled to Pakistan to survive for years.
The propagandistic idea that we were there to nation build and create a liberal democracy only entered the picture a year into the brutal bombing campaign because the US populace was turning against the war.
Then, we propped up a classic puppet government that was always destined to fail when we left. Elements of a puppet government include:
- installing a leader from a minority faction
- allowing them to violently repress members of the majority faction
- brutal violence inflicted upon dissenters
- development of natural resources for the desires of the imposing nation, a lack of sustainable development for the local people
- creating a system with very little input from local leaders, and never giving them a reason to participate or have skin in the game
The Afghan army had many huge problems. There is a plethora of news stories from 2008-2021 showing how the army is poorly trained, unmotivated, and largely drug addicted. Military leaders have been saying the entire time that this army would not stand on its own.
The Afghan army did have one strong motivation though: money. It was a mercenary army. But when the US withdrew in 2021 we stole the majority of the funds from the Afghan Central Bank (over $7bln dollars was taken by the Biden administration). Not only did this immoral act of theft cripple the Afghan economy, it destroyed their ability to pay the mercenary army.
No one who was actually paying attention expected the unpaid mercenary army to defend the puppet government once we left. Maybe, if the money kept flowing, they could have held up for a few months, but the stolen Central Bank funds ensured that was impossible.
I’m not saying “we don’t care”. Many individual people did earnestly care, and tried their best. But the military and civilian systems created by the US were never built for the benefit of the Afghan people. Your positive spin on this war is naive and ahistorical.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Great, it seems like we agree on the major points here! I’m not denying any of the major issues of the Afghan war, nor any of the glaring problems with how the whole “nation building” attempt went about. I’m very well aware of the history of the Afghan war, and have seen several of the documentaries you refer to that point out that it was largely known that the Afghan army would likely desert once the coalition left.
That is quite literally what you said in your first comment, and is literally the only thing I’ve disagreed with you on so far (“the world simply doesn’t care”).
This is literally the point I’ve been trying to make, but it seems like you keep misinterpreting me as saying the whole invasion was a misunderstood humanitarian operation. I’m not saying that.