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Notes -
Afghan national
Motive?
No idea, but I imagine that I might get pretty angry if I helped US forces in a war zone but was then not immediately given US citizenship in return and instead had to spend years navigating asylum and visa application processes. This, even if I had never been promised citizenship, as this man of course was not, since I would feel slighted.
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Supposedly he shouted “Allahu Akbar” while opening fire so apparently Islamic lone wolf terrorism.
Edit: Please disregard the fact that the shooter was employed by the CIA in Afghanistan. Please disregard the fact that this shooting has spurred a comprehensive review of all Green Card holders in the United States. :^)
This genuinely could be a real false flag.
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We now have a new addition to the list embarrassingly wrong Scott Alexander quotes:
And how do you verify that they are who the claim to be and harbor no jihadist sympathy?
Arnaud Amalric has some thoughts.
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The relative proportion of translators in the Afghan population is challenged only by the proportion of journalists in the Gazan population.
As somebody who's always been skeptical of the journalist numbers. I do assume if you're simply marking anybody who's ever taken footage or had an interview for journalistic purposes you could somehow explain Palestine's insane per Capita population.
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And hospitals/hospital personnel
Anybody casting aspersions on the 80% of Palestine's children who are simultaneously journalists and doctors should be chided
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These guys were our friends in a war zone so they must make for great neighbors.
Whilst I understand the fuzzy feels of helping those who help you, one would have preferred a sort of quarantine zone or special village for the empires mercenaries.
That being said, I think it's harsh to call Scott embarrassingly wrong based on these events in specific and that quote in particular. For starters, I'm not sure it's fair to assume any hardline position on small scale Afghani immigration based on the quote. He's talking about something else, no?.
But assuming he is, the awful performance of Afghani immigrants in Europe is a fact. So one could perhaps call him naïve on the topic of Afghani 'assimilation' if he can't imagine a reason to be against importing a fair number of them.
Afghan immigrants in Europe are mostly refugees who used the people-trafficker network to arrive overland. It is conventional wisdom in Frontex that various hostile countries, including Russia and Belarus, are intentionally facilitating refugee transit in order to destabilise the EU.
That is a differently selected group than people flown out of Afghanistan because they convinced US authorities that they were collaborators at risk of Taliban reprisal, and expecting different outcomes as a result isn't foolish. I don't know enough about the behaviour of Afghan immigrants in the US to know to what extent you are getting better results than us. One guy turning out to be a disorganised Islamist killer is weak Bayesian evidence that you are not, of course.
Refugees are also selected. They are the most privileged in that they have the money to afford the trip, and also the most cynical and selfish, in that they are willing to break laws across half the planet in order to make a quick buck.
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I mean Afghanis who speak english well enough to pose as translators are a very selected group.
They only have to speak Pashto better than Americans and to speak English better than other locals. That's two bars that are not very hard to clear.
They could very well turn out to be useful. I have a couple friends who are Middle Eastern (Iraqi-) Americans that I’ve known since childhood. They once told me they laughed pretty hard when they watched Zero Dark Thirty and asked why the scenes had Pakistanis speaking Arabic. It’s one of the ways Americans don’t understand other cultures.
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If the 'translators' shoot at police / guardsman does it matter if they're doing it for Islamic reasons and / or mental health reasons?
There was bodcam footage of the one from earlier im the year. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/northern-virginia/fairfax-police-release-body-cam-video-of-police-shooting-in-greenbriar/3921110/
No - of course it doesn't. I don't even think it is always a distinction with a difference - given the total ineffectiveness of disorganised political violence I assume anyone engaging in it is batshit until proven otherwise.
I was wondering if your Afghan refugees (who are weakly selected) behave better than European Afghan refugees (who are not selected at all) - the point I was making is that you really need statistics to settle this question rather than dualling anecdotes.
Yeah, maybe we could run the experiment in other people's countries first.
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How is that wrong?
Edit: I have no qualms saying my comments aged poorly.
The Afghan 'collaborators' were often drug-ridden, totally undisciplined, shamelessly corrupt, traitors and/or child rapists. These are the guys who gave us green-on-blue attacks. That's why the combined power of the US bloc lost to semi-literate goat-herders, the people we were allied with were in many respects worse than the Taliban and commanded less legitimacy among the population.
Plus the average Afghan refugee in the West is one of the most rapey and ill-mannered refugees.
This sounds like a cope. I am certain that allying with child-fucking warlords did not help win the hearts and minds of the Afghan population, but I also think that the eventual outcome was overdetermined the minute W invaded. Even if the US had made a point of murdering every alleged boy-fucker on the spot, the fact remains that few Afghans preferred freedom and democracy to the point where they were willing to die for it, while plenty were willing to die for the Taliban cause.
We could've installed a more effective puppet government and that would've worked. The Soviet puppet govt outlived the Soviet Union! Really not that hard to administer basic justice and secure a power base.
Realistically the US and co weren't going to do that or win because of these political factors you've identified - because freedom and liberal democracy was the goal. Would've been far easier to install a friendly govt that doesn't shelter Islamist terrorists. The bulk of the people we allied with were either feeble or corruptible, they were willing to give lip service to democracy or whatever they thought we would pay for. That's the problem.
Also I think the political value of murdering child rapists is underrated. That was the Taliban's original source of legitimacy, that was their starting mythology, hanging paedophiles from a tank barrel.
Not with US public opinion we couldn't.
"Administering justice and securing a power base" are, to the media and the US public, genocide and war crimes. We have to send our diplomats to hawk sex change surgeries to hillside goatherders and offer to "learn from Women of Color" who have an explosive belt locked around their waist by the warlord their family sold them to.
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And it's worth noting that when we went in, the US still had the geniuses behind operation condor. Say what you will, but Pinochet was not soft on crime. It wasn't lack of ability.
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Are we talking about the translators who were embeded with and beloved by US military units or the local warlords who got the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" treatment?
The program was not limited to translators, and Scott acknowledges that with "eg as translators". Anyone who worked for the American or coalition forces for at least 12 months can get a special immigrant visa.
Even steelmanning your argument though, why would we grant citizenship to someone willing to sell out their country to an invading power for a paycheck? When they swear their oath of citizenship to the United States, promising to bear arms on behalf of the US when required by law, and support and defend the Constitution, why would we believe them?
So your claim is that the Taliban regime ca. 2004 was the obvious Schelling point for Afghans interested in the long-term thriving of their country, and those who did not support the Taliban were clearly defecting from the common good of the country?
Personally, I think the loyalty of a population is earned, not given. Citizens of the US or modern Germany should display some loyalty to their government because it represents an equilibrium which has a higher utility than any other equilibrium they are likely to establish working against the government.
By contrast, less optimal regimes do not deserve loyalty. In 1945, Hitler was just the mobster in power, Stauffenberg blowing him up would not have let to a lower utility equilibrium, hence it was not treason to try to do so. Nor were the exile Germans who aided the Allies betraying Germany, because even with the Soviets, Ally-occupied Germany was a far better place for the Germans to thrive than Nazi Germany.
The real world is not Civilization where governments change but annexation is forever.
No. I just don't think they are demonstrating qualities that would make them uniquely valuable citizens, worthy of being fast-tracked through a special process. We have plenty of carrots and sticks for dealing with collaborators: money, status, security... And if we want our local collaborators to be effective, they should be invested in the success of our effort for the long haul. If their plan is to be on an evacuation flight out, why not staff the army with soldiers who only exist on paper, and rob the treasury blind?
...what occupation services do you think soldiers who only exist on paper would have provided that reduced the chance of the evacuation before it became necessary? And what do you think the treasury's prospects are if you had to pay actual market rates for collaborators to occupation forces who expose themselves and their families to retaliation?
The prospect of immigration preference for themselves or their families is the non-fiscal carrot to incentivize cooperation. It's fine if you don't think this demonstrates qualities that would make them 'uniquely' valuable citizens, but your zinger is kind directly ignoring the sort of direct contributions that they are providing, i.e. what services collaborators provide that a paper army doesn't, and how the prospect of compensation in some forms (migration) compensates/reduces the requirements of compensation in other forms (treasury).
You might as well ask 'if the plan is to get out of a collapsing burning building, why not replace firefighters with sinecures?' The answer is rather simple: because while there is a limit to what you can expect hires to do, the jobs they are hired to do is what reduces the risk of the sort of disaster that the hires would not stick around to die in.
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The Allies did polling in West Germany a year after the war ended in 45’. Hitler was still remarkably popular even then. Different societies have different attitudes about what they believe their relationship to their governments should be.
For you to have been a patriot back then you’d had to have actively opposed your own government, essentially knowing you were going to be rounded up and executed as these people undoubtedly knew. And they are certainly heroes for what they did.
It always boggles my mind how so many revisionist types can think otherwise. At heart I think a lot of people have this suppressed desire that they wish to have seen the Nazis win out and to have gotten their racial utopia. If you look at Nazi society it didn’t work very well for the people who were in it. And it certainly didn’t end very well for the people who were in it. Some people definitely benefitted but it wasn’t a government of its citizens, but of a particular category of citizens who the Nazis saw populating Germany’s future.
It’s also why the Allies took very careful steps in their postwar planning of Germany to crush Prussia and its influence over Germany. It historically was a massive fountainhead for its supremely militaristic attitude over all aspects of society. There’s a reason why it was called the “Iron Kingdom” and the “Sparta of Europe.” States like that tend to have a short half life. The ancient Assyrian Empire ended the same way, eventually declaring war on almost everyone within its neighborhood and having a religious ideology that demands you bring order and stability to the world outside by conquering the chaotic neighbors among the fringes of your borderlands.
What do you mean? Morality aside, it appeared to be working great. As you say, Hitler was remarkably popular, even after the extremely costly war was lost, and all the evil was revealed to those who pretended not to see.
First, like FDR, he presided over the recovery for the worst economic crisis of the century, which by itself confers Saviour status, even though it’s likely just mean reversion. In foreign policy, he was a gambler who repeatedly won big. At first the western allies kept flinching, giving him everything for nothing, and then when push came to shove he even easily beat what was in theory the best army in the world, partly because of his own tactical input.
In domestic policy, he understood himself as both of and as a ‘friend of the people’ – as a lower middle class guy, a corporal, he disliked both the liberal elites which ran weimar and the old conservatives elites, the ‘vons’. Aside from the economic recovery/rearmament boom, he was also transferring to poor germans the wealth stolen from jews, and later, other people’s jews’, and other people’s. Because of all his achievements and popularity (which he and his regime cared very much about), for the first years there was little repression.
I would say he bribed the germans far more than he threatened them, but bribe implies that they didn’t intrinsically want to follow him in the first place. The truth is, as vile as he was, he genuinely cared about and improved the life of the common man (in peacetime at least, and with increasingly evil means), and they always loved him back.
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I don't really get omni-nationalism. Americans believing that the US is the greatest and deserves extra status/power/deference/etc? Sure. Ditto for the French, Brazilians, Chinese, or even Afghans. I don't see anything strange about different people having different values and opinions, even if they can't see the obvious truth that Canada is better than any of them (despite its current troubles).
Putting every country at the top of the list (but only when projecting your opinions onto other people) is a different matter. If you think your homeland is the greatest, then why do you want every foreigner to express incorrect opinions? If you're a cosmopolitan moral relativist who thinks there is no true "greatest" place and it's all opinions and tradeoffs, then why not let other people believe that too?
Saying that people should oppose you makes me feel like nationalism is a debate-club-style issue that's fun to talk about, instead of an honestly expressed and important core belief. Heck, I rarely see sports team omni-supremacy anywhere ("cheer for your home team, whichever one that is"). It's all either neutrality or people cheering for their specific favored team.
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Because the Taliban isn't "their country", it is just a group of thugs even if it is located in their country. You wouldn't ask why someone in a place run by the Mafia, or a Jew in Nazi Germany, would sell out "their country".
If they are doing it only for the money, sure, but if they are doing it for other reasons, they still need to eat.
I’m not at all convinced a large majority of Afghans view the Taliban that way. Either now or when they first came to power. In the case of the latter, they were originally greeted as liberators because they were at least bringing some kind of order to the place. Believe it or not, that’s how ISIS initially gained a large swath of supporters in Syria because they stemmed a great deal of corruption among the local population.
I also think the American “PR campaign” if you want to call it that for the Taliban is kind of funny.
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There is a line in the sand for collaborating with a foreign invader to depose your government and occupy your country, which comes with unavoidable mass murder and atrocities. For Afghanistan, the death toll is estimated at around 200,000, along with the displacement of millions. The government actively trying to genocide you certainly crosses that line. The government enforcing a strict interpretation of Islamic law? That's a lot more questionable. Even a shitty government is often better than a foreign occupation and a low-intensity insurgency. Collaborating means obtaining a personal benefit from and enabling a process that imposes mass suffering on one's countrymen. I think the willingness to do so should be considered an anti-signal when it comes to citizenship, and certainly not an automatic qualification.
Overthrowing a bad government inherently means a lot of death. If the government deserves to be overthrown--and the Taliban certainly did---the death is not the fault of the people overthrowing it.
You are suggesting the heckler's veto of democracy: as long as the shitty government is willing to kill and die a lot, you are morally obligated to keep it in power.
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As an incentive to future collaborators? "Help us out, and you can earn your citizenship. Also, if everything does go to hell, we won't leave you in the lurch to be executed by the government you turned against".
The incentives seem misaligned when we reward our collaborators for failure. We spent decades and tens of billions of dollars training the ANA only for them to surrender practically without a fight. Giving them the prospect of an escape route to the US likely weakened their resolve rather than strengthening it. It also doesn't seem like the sort of behavior you'd expect from people who genuinely believe they will be executed or harshly persecuted by the new government.
I can see making an exception for rare cases that demonstrate remarkable courage or character as a PR strategy, but extending it to just about any collaborator is completely misguided.
If the incentives seem misaligned, that implicitly requires a perspective and understanding of what aligned incentives are. How much do you want to bet you can provide a set that others here couldn't trivially poke holes through?
You say that giving them a prospect of an escape route likely weakened their resolve. Why should their resolve to support the occupiers be any firmer if you, the occupier, make a policy that there is no escape? It should be rather obvious why that is creating an even greater incentive to not collaborate in the first place, which is what you the occupier need, and why this is a major incentive to side with the resistance whose mantra for decades was 'when the foreigners leave, we will still be here.'
Which, historically, was the winning strategy. Which is why the Afghan clans regularly played both sides, with family members on both sides of the conflict, so that if/when the GIROA failed they had family on the Taliban side who was willing to cover for them if they capitulated. It was the people who had undertaken acts of significant support of GIROA, often at foreign behest, whose families couldn't cover for them.
Yes, people are unlikely to fight to the death for you if they have an escape route. They are also unlikely to fight to the death for you if they do not have an escape route. This is because they are more likely to not fight for you in the first place, and even if they do are more likely to defect earlier on.
If your incentive strategy is moving the defection point even further up in the timeline, it should be visible why this is an even worse alignment of incentives.
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I'm talking about the Afghan military and well-connected associates of the old regime, which would presumably make up the bulk of those who got away. There may well be many decent people, translators amongst them. Generally, the population of Afghan refugees as a whole is badly behaved.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ive-worked-refugees-decades-europes-afghan-crime-wave-mind-21506
So, not the translators Scott was referring to?
That is what he said. Translators are included as part of this pool but do not make up the not the bulk of refugees.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2021/09/22/two-fort-mccoy-afghan-refugees-charged-child-sex-spousal-abuse/5820807001/
As I understand the chaotic fall of Kabul, there was very little "vetting", the evacuated were just lucky people who barged into the planes first. Is my understanding correct?
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YMMV, but "embedded with" =/= "beloved by"
Terps are like officers. Maybe someone somewhere had a good one, but for all the rest of us, they're the people most likely to get us killed.
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But the collaborator in Guy Ritchie's "The Covenant" seemed really nice
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I can guarantee you that there were people who were opposed to giving Afghan refugees citizenship.
I guess this one is an opinion, but I would not classify the people who rushed immigration forms for nationals of a terror-stricken country as “heroic”. Over the course of the war, there was a constant stream of Afghans who we thought were on our side becoming terrorists. The people administering this program should have known that.
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