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I think that the Afghanistan war/occupation is not discussed enough. Perhaps we are all so used to government failure that we just nod our heads and ignore what happened over there.
The US occupied that entire country for 20 years. It spent an estimated $2.3 trillion. When the US went in there, the place was controlled by authoritarian Islamists who oppress women. Today, the place is controlled by authoritarian Islamists who oppress women.
People's sense of what is important is so delusional sometimes. Here in the US, people often argue over minor issues like who gets to go into what bathroom, or whether there are enough strong women in television shows. Meanwhile, the US taxpayer spent $2.3 trillion on Afghanistan, there was a major opportunity to actually do some real feminism, to actually reshape Afghan culture to make it more liberal, and it just didn't happen. I'm not sure how much it was even attempted.
I get that the original reason for occupying Afghanistan was 9/11, but the US was in there for 20 years. There is no way you can tell me that you can't reshape a society of just 40 million people when you're there for 20 years, you spend $2.3 trillion, and you have overwhelming military force. Societies have been forcefully reshaped in the past and they will be in the future. Take Germany or Japan for example.
Did the US even try over there? Was the whole thing just an excuse to put taxpayer money into rich people's pockets? People just nod and smile about the whole thing, like "of course we spent $2.3 trillion and got nothing for it other than neutralizing Al Qaeda, that's just how the government works". It's kind of weird to me that there isn't more outrage about the whole thing. Neutralizing Al Qaeda did not use up 20 years and $2.3 trillion. One can argue about whether foreign interventionism and nation building is good or bad, and there are good cases to be made for both sides, but that's not really my subject matter. My point is that since there was a supposed attempt at nation building over there, we at least should have gotten something out of it. If the taxpayer supports you to the tune of $2.3 trillion, and you achieve no nation building after 20 years despite having overwhelming military force, then it seems to me that the taxpayer has been massively ripped off.
Yes you can. There is a pretty big difference between forcing a country to change it's foreign policy (and in Germany's case roll back internal politics by 15 years) and changing pretty fundamental parts of 1400+ of years of culture.
Could America have changed Afghan culture in 20 years anyway? Sure, but that would probably have required heavy-handedness to the point of genocide, which i doubt Pakistan would have agreed to act as a staging ground for.
Consider how long it took for islam to really take hold in the middle east.
I'm not sure that Japan only got rolled back 15 years.
Why would inculcating some semblance of patriotism, such that the Afghan army doesn't immediately collapse, require genocide?
It's been discussed before, but Japan had been modernising rapidly since the Meiji era. They wanted what the Americans had. Not all of it, but enough of it, and the Americans were careful to leave enough of Japanese culture intact that they could spin it as reform with American aid rather than straightforward subjugation.
At a guess, because the area called 'Afghanistan' is made up of different tribal groups who hate each other, and are only prevented from doing anything about it by tyrants with sufficient ruthlessness and firepower. Making Afghans pretend to be a country requires you to act like a Taliban warlord; making them actually patriotic would require ethnic cleansing of all the groups except the ones you've decided to support.
I doubt it. Americans had control over the education system for 20 years, that's a whole generation, and we're not talking about implanting some galaxy-brained fourth-wave feminism, just basic nationalism that most other countries managed to move on to by similar means. Not to mention that you don't even need to do this to the entire country, you just need enough young men to hold the line against a bunch of angry goat herders.
If there was evidence that the US actually gave that an honest try, I might consider tribalism running in Afghan blood, but as it stands it looks like pure cope.
What's even "the education system" in a notoriously poor and fractured country? It's not like everyone was going to some full K12 thing paid for by the US.
The US could totally win over everyone in a large circle around Kabul and still end up losing the war.
When you've pushed 2 trillion dollars into it? It's whatever you want it to be.
"Money = outcomes" isn't even true in the American educational system. Not sure why it would be true in Afghanistan.
I think that fits better with my argument than yours. The reason money doesn't translate into results in America is because the elites are following terrible ideas. The reason why it didn't translate into result in Afghanistan is because the American elites in charge of it were following terrible ideas.
I thought you brought up Afghanistan's poverty to point out some material limit to what they could to, my point was that with the amount of resources that the US actually pulled there, there were no such material limits.
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