Our intervention in Afghanistan was a disaster for many reasons, one overlooked is this. The natives there had over millennia adjusted to those in charge politically, religiously, economically and knew how to get along, like it or not. Our intervention and occupation made other choices seem possible: female rights, education in secular subjects, democracy, etc. These things never had a chance to last and our withdrawal made that even more certain. Now the population there is partly composed of people even more disgruntled than before and more unlikely ever to get the changes we have taught them to want, changes we think good and desirable but actually impossible in a place of medieval Muslim culture and mores. Why does no one understand how much we have ruined this country of Afghanistan for good? We have done more harm than the British and the Soviets combined.
Our intervention in Afghanistan was a disaster for many reasons, one overlooked is this. The natives there had over millennia adjusted to those in charge politically, religiously, economically and knew how to get along, like it or not. Our intervention and occupation made other choices seem possible: female rights, education in secular subjects, democracy, etc. These things never had a chance to last and our withdrawal made that even more certain. Now the population there is partly composed of people even more disgruntled than before and more unlikely ever to get the changes we have taught them to want, changes we think good and desirable but actually impossible in a place of medieval Muslim culture and mores. Why does no one understand how much we have ruined this country of Afghanistan for good? We have done more harm than the British and the Soviets combined.