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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   27313 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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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.

No mention of Bacha Barzai?

In 2011, an Afghan mother in Kunduz Province reported that her 12-year-old son had been chained to a bed and raped for two weeks by an Afghan Local Police (ALP) commander named Abdul Rahman. When confronted, Rahman laughed and confessed. He was subsequently severely beaten by two U.S. Special Forces soldiers and thrown off the base.[41] The soldiers were involuntarily separated from the military, but later reinstated after a lengthy legal case.[42] As a direct result of this incident, legislation was created called the "Mandating America's Responsibility to Limit Abuse, Negligence and Depravity", or "Martland Act" named after Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland.[43]

...

In a 2013 documentary by Vice Media titled This Is What Winning Looks Like, British independent film-maker Ben Anderson describes the systematic kidnapping, sexual enslavement and murder of young men and boys by local security forces in the Afghan city of Sangin. The film depicts several scenes of Anderson along with American military personnel describing how difficult it is to work with the Afghan police considering the blatant molestation and rape of local youth. The documentary also contains footage of an American military advisor confronting the then-acting police chief about the abuse after a young boy is shot in the leg after trying to escape a police barracks. When the Marine suggests that the barracks be searched for children, and that any policeman found to be engaged in pedophilia be arrested and jailed, the high-ranking officer insists what occurs between the security forces and the boys is consensual, saying "[the boys] like being there and giving their asses at night". He went on to claim that this practice was historic and necessary, rhetorically asking: "If [my commanders] don't fuck the asses of those boys, what should they fuck? The pussies of their own grandmothers?"[45]

In 2015, The New York Times reported that U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan were instructed by their commanders to ignore child sexual abuse being carried out by Afghan security forces, except "when rape is being used as a weapon of war". American soldiers have been instructed not to intervene—in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records. But the U.S. soldiers have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the U.S. military was arming them against the Taliban and placing them as the police commanders of villages—and doing little when they began abusing children.[46][47]

According to a report published in June 2017 by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the DOD had received 5,753 vetting requests of Afghan security forces, some of which related to sexual abuse. The DOD was investigating 75 reports of gross human rights violations, including 7 involving child sexual assault.[48] According to The New York Times, discussing that report, American law required military aid to be cut off to the offending unit, but that never happened. US Special Forces officer, Capt. Dan Quinn, was relieved of his command in Afghanistan after fighting an Afghan militia commander who had been responsible for keeping a boy as a sex slave.[49]

Far be it from me to imply that there isn't a certain amount of logic here. Fighting child-rape is part of the founding myth of the Taliban, so obviously if we're fighting the Taliban child-rapists are natural allies. The same logic applies to drug dealers, clearly, which was why we spent twenty years just never quite getting around to any serious effort to crimp opium production, something the Taliban was also quite good at, and why Afghanistan had four times more land being used to cultivate poppies at the end of the war as it had at the start.

...where's Charles James Napier when you need him?

A friend of a friend was a rather naive female Air Force engineer. Her CIA handler had to literally pull her away from the group of Afghan army men she was talking to because ‘if you get in that car they will gangrape you’. And these were allies.

Why she had a CIA handler I don’t know but presumably because of her distressing propensity to become a front page news story.

I mean, say what you will about the US elite, they’re pretty good at pretending CSA of boys is normal and acceptable behavior. No doubt the official story was that the boys were dancers or some such(does anyone doubt what dancers giving private performances in quarters actually are) fulfilling the diversity of gender roles in rural Afghanistan.

What I find interesting about this is that it wasn't exactly quiet at the time: The Kite Runner was a pretty popular book at the time and featured the practice pretty prominently, albeit set at a time other than the US occupation.

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