There's a lot of discussion about Afghanistan today, for obvious reasons, but I hadn't really felt like posting about it. Partly because my thoughts are (as always) complicated.
Also because if there's one thing Iraq taught me it was how difficult it was to understand the situation when you're not there. And how fast the situation can change.
It's been about a decade since I was in Afghanistan. Helmand Province, to be more specific. So while I'm confident I know more than the average American, I would not claim to be an expert.
I've seen a variety of takes, from 'we were never going to succeed' (and what was the definition of success, anyway?) to a rather well written rebuttal (except what was our strategic interest there, too? Was it just to prevent another 9/11? Was it a modern version of the Great Game?) to all sorts of things.
I do mostly relate to the sense of sadness and feelings of worry. For the people left behind, and a country that has already been through too much.
But a decade ago I felt like we didn't really have the political will to do what we needed to, and half-assing something like that gives you the worst combination of possibilities. (it's also strange that so many news articles are acting like withdrawing was a terrible idea, but few of them were willing to actually risk anything to make a better option).
If you really want open-ended investment (and I understand why setting dates is also bad, since then the Taliban just knows how long they need to wait you out) please at least show you were willing to risk your life by deploying there.
But that's all... Broad overviews. It doesn't really get at the heart of the problem.
Which, I think, is that we have a pretty poor understanding of how to 'nation build', and so our efforts were often at cross purposes.
Oh, I've seen some people pointing fingers at the Afghan people. At the local forces we trained and the local government, who were supposed to step up so we could step back.
But I've said before that people are people. There's definitely unique cultural differences, but I don't think you can say any large swathe of humanity is more incompetent or cowardly or corrupt or whatever excuse you're making than any other.
It's a bit like how wealthy people blame poor people for their poverty and claim they're just 'lazy', instead of looking at themselves and the rather crappy leadership they display. (motivating people us part of leadership, and laziness and malingering is often a reaction to poor leadership. Maybe not your leadership, people are complicated and come with a variety of personal histories. But if you assume the worst of people you probably aren't doing anything to gain their trust and find a way to motivate them.)
There's rather a lot packed up in those claims, but I think I'd digress too much trying to dig into it right now. Let's just say that a local force that gives up and stands down as soon as we're not there to back them probably doesn't have any real reason to risk their lives.
Afghanistan...
Our involvement there brought up some of our own cognitive dissonance. Because on the one hand we're a large and powerful nation and we seem to think we can do things like nation building, and on the other hand we are very reluctant to be colonizers and imperialists enforcing our way of doing things.
Hmmm, that's again overly simplistic. We're perfectly willing to enforce a system of voting, democracy if you will. But democracy is supposed to mean a system that reflects the will of the people, and if the will of a people (with no particular experience with that type of governance) is to do things we don't really like, we can't interfere without making a mockery of the system we're trying to put in place. Except even if we're trying to do that (and our current troubles make me question how much we really even understand democracy. Since far too many people don't seem willing to resolve our differences with elections, and seem bound and determined to throw that out if they would lose... Not seeming to realize that the alternative would be far uglier and likely to hurt a lot of people, themselves included) we still run into the problem of cultural differences.
I think, sometimes, of how the British discouraged Indian widows from throwing themselves on their husband's funeral pyre. That was a commonly accepted cultural thing. Interfering is imperialistic and disrespectful of their culture, right? But... Women were dying. In our culture it's just wrong.
Part of the reason Afghans didn't seem all that interested in dying for their government, at least in my admittedly inexpert opinion, was that said government seemed overly corrupt and wasn't really serving them.
But corruption is part of how they do business (and I'm not sure how much I want to pass judgment on that, given the level of corruption we've recently demonstrated. The powers-that-be have benefited from the wiser decisions of their predecessors, and too many seem to have forgotten or lost all knowledge of the why's and wherefores of those decisions.)
Anyways, a decade ago we didn't seem to really have the commitment to make the sorts of changes we'd have to in order to truly build a nation, but also didn't seem willing to give up and go home, so we just kind of kept doing what we were doing and hoping that if we gave the Afghan government enough time they could sort themselves out.
It didn't seem to be happening, but I've admittedly lost touch with the situation over there.
