Afghan Exit:why, how and more in country and beyond

[jcustis]

The word "abandon" is emotionally loaded and I don't see any place for it in a discussion like this. Do you suggest that protecting the populace of the world is an American responsibility? Or that once the US associates with a dysfunctional government they are then committed to defend the governed populace forever?

If Afghans want to keep the Taliban out, they can do that. They sent the Russians back to Russia, they're sending the Americans back to America, they can send the Taliban back to Pakistan... if they want to. If they don't want to, that's ultimately up to them. I don't see how protecting Afghans from themselves, or from each other, is an American responsibility.

Quoted for truth, as they say. Absolute truth.

[Bill Moore]

Posted by JM999

If one believes that the US is "the city on the hill" and has an obligation to safeguard "millions of people" (actually "billions") from "lethal killers", then one is obliged, I suppose, to preach what Mr Haass said. The problem is that, if in the course of these neo-colonial wars, one must pull the plug, charges of hypocrisy are well founded indeed.

I do not believe that the US is "the city on the hill"; or that it has an obligation to safeguard "millions of people" (actually "billions") from "lethal killers" - other than its own citizens. I am therefore a "bad, evil person".

Posted by Dayuhan

The word "abandon" is emotionally loaded and I don't see any place for it in a discussion like this. Do you suggest that protecting the populace of the world is an American responsibility? Or that once the US associates with a dysfunctional government they are then committed to defend the governed populace forever?

Lot's of wisdom in the above quotes, and while I emphasize with Carl's lamenting, I have come to a place where I believe the American people have a strong sense of right and wrong, which is a large part of what makes me proud to be an American. The downside to this (and I have definitely been guilty of this) is they feel compelled to act when they see an injustice in the world, but they have no idea where that act will take them or the millions of people impacted by it. We collectively have naive beliefs about how the world works, and then when we find out that can't save all the children or send all the girls to school despite our best efforts, and we get tired of our people coming home in coffins or terribly maimed with no end in sight we abandon altrustic goals for more reasonable ones. The question we need to ask in the beginning before we commit is will we ultimately do more good, or create a worse situation like we did in Iraq where more people died after Saddam was soundly defeated?

A case in point that is not Afghanistan centric. We generally find it apalling that kids would work in a so-called sweat shop for 10-12 hours a day in a developing nation, although kids did it in the US during the industrial revolution. We find it more disgusting if they're working in a company making goods for a US Company. We're so disgusted that we jump on our white horse and ride to the rescue. In this case Senator Harkin in 1993 proposed legislation banning imports from countries that hire underage workers. Bangladesh saw the writing on the wall, and directed its factories quit hiring children. Bravo! America came to the rescue, we can all sleep better.

The rest of the story is those kids didn't go to school or stay home and watch Sesame Street, in many cases they ended up in worse jobs, living on the street, and in many cases they ended up as child prostitutes. They worked in those sweat shops because they were the best available alternative and we took that away from them with the best of intentions, because we used mirror imaging, and assuming if the kids weren't in sweat shops they would be going to school.

We're naive as a people because most of our people view the world through 30 second sound bytes and make a judgment on whether something is good or bad, and may even push to have the government deploy the military to "fix" the problem. The military isn't broke because it can't fix these problems, but our national level decision making process is.