link to original reddit post by /u/omgcoin
Over past few days it was very frustrating reading ignorant collectivist comments like:
- If last 20 years didn't teach Afghans how to resist, nothing helps;
- Afghans want Taliban to rule them;
- Afghans running out like cowards;
- We did everything we can to help them;
And so on.
The first thing to realize is that Afghanistan is very complicated country with lots of different ethnic groups separated by mountains. There is no single, monolithic thing as Afghan people.
In fact, I do think the most natural form of governance for Afghanistan would be confederation (like Old Swiss Confederation) without any central government.
Historically, there were natural enemies of Taliban who was main resistance in 1990s (Northern Alliance). They don't like Pakistan (the main backer of Taliban) for their own reasons.
As far as I understand US propped up puppet Afghan government which supposed to be centralized and democratic by nature. Of course, this regime would not only contradict natural structure of society (which is more suitable for confederation) but also embezzled massive amount of funds (it's pointless to pour water in bucket with a hole!). And on top of that puppet state would inevitably lead to even more radicalization of youth.
So what happened according to game theory? Any centralized state (even puppet state) seeks to eliminate (or at least weaken) alternative elites (or using Hoppean term - natural elites). These alternative elites were natural immunity against Taliban.
This centralized puppet state become a single point of failure. So it shouldn't be surprise that once US left, this puppet state instantly imploded like house of cards. I don't see how this can qualify as "we did our best".
In the other words, US did exactly opposite what could be done. And pouring trillions of dollars into wrong solution doesn't make fundamentally wrong solution more correct. In general, this fiasco exposes US government as incapable to think in nuances. In the light of recent implosion, the movie American Made (with Tom Cruise) looks more like real documentary than a comedy (in the sense, how they depicted training contras).
Correct solution would be supplying military grade weapons to every resident of historically hostile to Taliban regions (like Panjshir). This solution is very simple and effective because you don't even need to pick leaders of specific groups (which can be point of corruption). It's like universal basic income but with military weapons lol
Besides that promote similar culture of trade as it was between Italian city states (and so on). Counterintuitively, it looks like Afghanistan was more naturally fit to confederation than other countries. So it's not only ideologically correct solution but also practical.
Of course, I understand that even if you assume zero corruption in US government, it would be very unnatural to promote anarchy and arming citizens with military weapons by those who build their entire career within centralized government. So what I wrote above is what could be done in principle but it would never be done by US government even if there were zero corruption and fully benevolent leadership.
My proposal might sound very crazy to normies. However, I do think it's far more crazy to spend a trillion dollars just to create a single point of failure and then let it to implode within days. But I'm sure many liberals would still argue that being taken over by Taliban is better than anarchy.
I understand that there is a very big downside of such radical experiments in very well functioning democracies like Norway. But failed states like Afghanistan can only gain from anarchy, there is literally no downside (mainly because the worst possible downside already provided by centralized state).