What’s the question? If the question is, “Hey, would you like to be part of our global corporation that will turn you into a cog in a machine and erase your past?” then, I might say “no” to that. I was born into that system at a place that gives a great deal of comfort, but a few billion people don’t get those advantages. They see how my buying Doritos leads to them choosing between slave like working conditions or joining a paramilitary or just dying back home on the acre of land they try to live off of.
Of course there are other means. We’ve been doing it for decades. We help build infrastructure, we try to show the value of educating women, we encourage elections. And please, don’t remind that “we”, the collective history of America, also does the opposite. The question you raised is if there are options other than attempting wipe people off the face of the planet until the only ones left agree with your system of governance.
We went into Vietnam and showed them that capitalism is better than communism. They are now manufacturing and selling us all sorts of stuff. Looks like China was paying attention too.
We went to Afganistan and showed the women just how much better people are without the oppression of Islam. The men will find out that the women want change. Wait for it, it will happen. It will be a “the hand that rocks the cradle” sort of thing. Once they have seen the bright lights of the city they don’t want to go back to the farm.
Somehow freedom and human rights are better. I heard one comment that the Taliban are going through an existential crisis. I think that’s true for the Chinese as well. Hopefully in the long term, the very long term, the cost will have been worth it.
The people that attacked us were Islamic fundamentalists who were primarily angry about our massive support for Israel — a long standing threat to them. They don’t care about our globalization schemes. They aren’t mad at your “lifestyle”.
You can’t reason with them. They don’t care about the help we give them. Our options are either withdrawal from the region or a constant state of potential war.
Withdrawal doesn’t eliminate the threat of war. If we want the world we have, we need global commerce. If we want a world of equal rights, we can’t ignore it when people are tortured for thinking differently. We, the Western powers, drew an arbitrary line and called in Afghanistan, and then we were surprised when everyone inside that line didn’t get along.
The United States is alone among other industrialized Western countries in its reluctance to ratify hunsn rights. It did not begin to ratify major human rights treaties until the late 1980s, taking almost 40 years to become the 98th country to ratify the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It still has not ratified many significant human rights treaties, including the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights—part of the International Bill of Human Rights. The United States also has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), one of only seven countries who hasn’t including Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan and Tonga. The United States and Somalia are the only countries that have not ratified Convention on the Rights of the Child.
While President Biden could have planned better for evacuations, the Afghanistan current situation was not his fault. It’s what happens when the dotard makes his bad deals and crap.
And
I saw an article from fact check dot org that went over all of this and I can probably find that after work today, but the thing is, the invasion of the Taliban into Afghanistan was actually the dotard’s fault.
Just because they’re not signed, doesn’t mean they don’t follow the guidelines and ideals. And if the US did sign off on these all the wing-nuts and anti-globalists will start crying that we’re folding to the One World Government.
Don’t know if it put it that starkly, but there is some truth to the idea that international treaties have political landmines. There are consequences to signing or not signing. Have your examined the track record of everyone who has signed? How many are signing so they get a favor from China, instead of signing for truly humanitarian reasons? I’m not defending the US on this, and I could into our internal politics as well, and show that we are a monolith, we have groups that disagree for political and power reasons within our borders too.
So, once again, DJ brings up something new, distracts from earlier questions, leaves dialog untouched and just throws another wrench in, claiming it explains everything and shows up everyone else.
If you are going to comment on a thread about Afghanistan, you should know how that country’s borders were created. You should google that. I’m not here to give you history lessons.
This is just basic ability to read and comprehend. Obviously, mrmhead is not “one of those”. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that you are not capable of participating in these discussions.
One thing this new forum doesn’t do, is show you a status of a user. Even if someone is completely banned, we will leave their posts in place, for continuity of threads. We now have more tools, like we can temporarily “silence” a member. You won’t hear from DJ for a little bit, but he can read your posts.
He was trolling, arguing with moderators, and when he did make a lengthy post with some substnace, it was a cut-and-paste job with no attribution.
We can have global commerce without using the foreign policy of the last 70 years. As for “equal rights” , being the world’s police force has not worked out well in the long run.
Not accurate. The ethnic groups in the region have been exactly where they are since the silk road era at least. The region has always been known as chaotic. The British came up with the Durrand line – which is the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the people who live there have never recognized it.
Afghanistan has been a name on a map for a long time but never a nation in practice.
Evacuation fiasco:
If one expected the Afghan gov’t and military to hold up longer than 11 days, the evacuation would be slower and more controlled, orderly.
If American lives were in imminent danger, I don’t think anyone would have recommended a military pullout.
I had also read on another board, without references, that the previous administration didn’t even start the visa process for the interpreters which is lending to delays and confusion. Without any info, I don’t know what prep-work could have been done, and what impact that would have - but given the previous administrations xenophobia, I wouldn’t put it past them to ignore those people.
The other day an Afghan war vet came through my line and we were talking. I compared what was happening to the Fall of Saigon and she said, “It is Vietnam all over again.” Ironically, the vet was younger than I am and she understood what I was saying. It’s been hard on her, she said, but thank me for my support. All I said, was, “it must be hard seeing all this go down.” adding that I can’t imagine how she was feeling. I avoid giving the traditional “Thank you for your service” crap. Most are actually tired of hearing it. I try to give honest support and not just lip service.
Still, I could see she was holding back tears, but it was obvious she experienced trauma, struggling with the current situation, and probably will continue to struggle for a while. I feel bad for all of them, especially since it was a war that should have never been fought- at least by the U.S.
Vietnamese weren’t fighting for communism. They were fighting another invader in a long line of invaders.
Don’t count on it. Afghans are a devout people but generally not extremist. Taliban is not seen as the worst thing by most Afghans, including the women. Also, the idea that muslim women are desperate to be liberated from Islam is really ridiculous chauvinism that needs to be put to rest.
It is true freedom and human rights are better, but those are broad terms that mean different things to different people. Our way of life is not appealing to everyone. Or even most people worldwide.
I suppose it was a little bit of dramatization and interpretation. Here’s some info:
Blockquote Olivia Troye tweeted that Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to former President Donald Trump, teamed up with “enablers” to undermine anyone trying to get the allies out by “devastating” the special immigrant visa system at the departments of State and Homeland Security.
“Stephen Miller would peddle his racist hysteria about Iraq & Afghanistan,”
…
State Department spokesman Ned Price this week said the Biden administration inherited a special immigrant visa system that had chronic shortages in staffing, lacked a coordinating official and had a bureaucratic 14-step process that was enshrined in statute.
At Biden’s direction, Price said, the administration added resources and made enough changes to shave more than a year off the average processing time.
No they were fighting French colonialism, but they adopted Chinese communism as a means to independence. What they got was a nation dependent on China and one with a communist government. The Vietnamese folks I know, some of whom return to Vietnam to visit family every year, say Vietnam is half communist and half capitalist and the only good part is capitalist. These people don’t talk about the child sex trafficking and other government corruption problems shown on US TV.
Oh sure, we can see the videos of the girls and women just begging to be allowed to quit school and be proud to be good uneducated invisible Muslim women. I have a hard time understanding just who it is that forces them to go to school and makes them want to participate in a society that under Islamic law relegates them to second class, actually no class, property of their father or husband.
I liked the part where the Taliban leader said women would have all the rights provided under Islamic law. Is there any question about what he meant?
Can you show us any video or report that the Taliban have had to set up additional immigration vetting stations to service all those who want to get in and enjoy the advantages of living in a strict Islamic state?