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PaperclipPerfector  27d ago (text post)   24136 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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This is an absurd exaggeration of what the US did in Afghanistan. Like come on the US occupied it because supporting the Mujahedeen and then leaving a power vacuum worked out terribly last time and led almost directly to 9/11. And come on the NGOs in Afghanistan were doing things like teaching women to read and digging wells they weren't busting out the gender unicorn.

America committed a lot more than that. From the official Special Inspector Report "Support for Gender Equality: Lessons from the US Experience in Afghanistan":

(Pardon the bing search link)

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=3274be0ed828a64327f591595169b4050f8cec24564f797aaf9ff874827db94eJmltdHM9MTc4OTQzMDQwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=01dcd28c-902e-6f4c-3fd6-c55991396e4d&psq=Support+for+Gender+Equality%3a+Lessons+from+the+U.S.+Experience+in+Afghanistan&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ292aW5mby5nb3YvY29udGVudC9wa2cvR09WUFVCLVMtUFVSTC1ncG8xNTY5MzAvcGRmL0dPVlBVQi1TLVBVUkwtZ3BvMTU2OTMwLnBkZg

Consider pages 42-43:

In pursuit of greater gender equality in Afghanistan, the U.S. and Afghan governments adopted an approach known as gender mainstreaming, in which the design and implementation of development programs are required to be sensitive to gender norms and disparities. In theory, mainstreaming encourages donors to evaluate the potential effects of any development policy or program to make sure that those efforts do not inadvertently exacerbate existing inequalities.

The impetus for this concept was the growing recognition of the ineffectiveness of stand-alone gender programs. Instead of relying solely on separate projects for women, gender mainstreaming advocated bringing women’s issues and perspectives into all programs or policies, with special attention being paid to how an intervention might impact men and women differently.

(Thrilling stuff!)

Official American policy was to implement "Gender Mainstreaming" into all aspects of Afghan policy; in effect, the US military was used to prop up NGOs who wanted to socially engineer Afghanistan into having completely modern American liberal views about gender. This included mandating all "project designs" address gender, the creation of a stand-alone Office of Gender, routine "gender analysis" -- for example:

The purpose of requiring a gender analysis, as noted by one senior gender advisor at USAID, “is not just to do it, but to use it to shape the documents you are working on.” For example, a gender analysis might reveal that income-generating activities for women can provoke a rise in domestic violence. Taking this into account, USAID officials designing a project might then include activities that encourage men to be more receptive to a shift in power dynamics within a relationship.

So you want to spend some American money to support Afghan farms, but you can't do this without also making women get some of the money, but you can't do that without conducting a gender analysis which concludes that we need to encourage Afghan "men to be more receptive to a shift in power dynamics within a relationship".

Page 47 of this report, by the way, concludes that the "failure" of "gender mainstreaming" "does not necessarily mean that it should be discounted as a viable means to raise the profile of gender equality".

They think it was working.

This is not conspiracy Fox News red meat conservacon slop stuff. Washington DC used the American military to support an endless cultural revolution within Afghanistan, and their own autopsy concludes that they didn't try hard enough. This is no surprise if you have spent any time in Washington, because it is full of endless NGOs that want to use our tax dollars to promote endless impossible grifts that have all the right credentials and K Street speak.

At the same time, as anyone who served in Afghanistan can tell you, while the NGOs were running around promoting extremely unpopular social revolutions, the American military was being used to safeguard the poppy fields that grew the opium that kept Afghanis in thrall to an addiction. This was extremely unpopular and the Taliban earned a lot of goodwill by stamping out the poppy industry wherever they could.

It's silly stuff.

Donald Trump is not doing any of that!

He is simply going to bomb them until someone he can negotiate a deal with comes to surrender.

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