The "Taliban" are not an Afghan culture to begin with. They are a culture of religious extremism, and more to the point they aren't Afghan to begin with because many of the "Taliban" are not Afghans, but nationals from Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc. They are a product of the madrassas, not Afghanistan. They can't pull off a nation based on religious extremism back home (think of their aims as The Free State Project in reverse), but up until now Afghanistan has been ripe for the picking.
In short, those who complain about our interfering with "their culture" are in fact complaining about Canada interdicting a brutal invading culture made up of many people just as foreign to Afghanistan as Canadians. The difference is Canadians hope to give native Afghans a foundation for survival and growth and then leave; the Taliban intend to build nothing other than a base for religious extremism without government interference, and they have no intention of ever leaving unless driven out. Nor do they intend to allow Afghanis the right to live based on their prior culture - it will be culture as dictated by the Taliban or a brutal death.
Various "pundits" keep commenting on how the Taliban are gathering strength, particularly when they mention the Northern Alliance. They sell this as evidence of Afghans increasingly supporting the Taliban.
This is nonsense. The difference is, of course, that the Northern Alliance is almost entirely Afghanis. The Taliban don't draw only from Afghanis after they get their asses kicked time and time again and get slaughtered by the score. They send out the call to every wannabe Muslim extremist in the world to come fight for them in their attempt to win Afghan back as a base for their Muslim extremism (and the actual Afghan Muslim population be damn3d). And so, the madrassas in Pakistan and elsewhere send more fighters brainwashed from childhood to fight and die in the name of their twisted version of Allah (and once again, the Afghan Muslims be damn3d). Claiming that the products of madrassas in foreign countries coming to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan is evidence of Afghanis turning to support the Taliban is ridiculous.
On the one hand, this constant influx of brutal Muslim fanatics makes progress in Afghanistan much slower than it could be. On the other hand, if all those happy to murder and slaughter in the name of the Taliban's version of Allah want to travel to Afghanistan to concentrate themselves in an environment like Afghanistan, it certainly makes the Three "F"s Of Land Combat much easier to attain. A better situation for us, although hard on Afghanis. On the other hand, they're going to come anyways, especially if the Taliban win in the end, and they'll slaughter and enslave Afghan Muslims anyways, so they aren't any worse off and foreign assistance is only the real hope of a decent future they have.
In the end, it comes down to the Genovese syndrome, I suppose. At what point do people start feeling there is a basic human obligation to defend others against evil? Many people felt it wasn't our problem when the Nazi Party was slaughtering Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, etc. That attitude hasn't stopped since: witness Yugo, Rwanda, the Congo, etc. If they or their family ain't bleedin' then it ain't their problem. For different people there's a different boundary: not a few people would see your wife being rap3d or beaten and go "Not my wife; not my problem". Others of course would be outraged and wonder by someone should be so callous and feel they had no business interfering.
I guess it just depends on what your moral tolerance for slaughter is. And perhaps for some, a belief that one should not interfere unless one can do it absolutely perfectly with a guarantee of not a single slip or mishap while doing so. No accidental deaths, no friendly fire incidents, nothing:
everything perfect and beyond criticism from beginning to end.
Canadian troops are heavily behind this because many of them or their fireteam partners have had the educational opportunity of uncovering mass graves in Yugo and Rwanda - that tends to be a life altering experience that many who blithely claim we should just let them go at it haven't had. Guys don't go over there for the love of war and because they enjoy being away from their wives and family for a year, living in an environment that kicks the ass of those raised in North America, along with the bonus opportunity of possibly getting maimed or killed. They go because they know they can make a difference and the guys coming back are telling them they have seen they're making a difference.
I would still have more confidence in those who want us out of there if they would volunteer to go over to Afghanistan before we leave and individually explain to all the women in positions of authority, elected individuals from small city councils on up, etc why leaving them to be slaughtered by the Taliban was a more moral road to take. Given Taliban Jack's professed support for equality and rights for women, perhaps he could just focus on explaining to Afghan women why he supports them being thrown out of schools, ordered back into burkhas, and stripped of just about every right that women in Canada take for granted. Not to mention a regular procession of stoning, hangings, and female heads being blown off in assorted soccer stadiums...
the regular beatings in the streets for a bewildering number of offences is simply pour encouragez les autres...
It's easy to talk about deserting people to the mercy of murderous thugs, whether you argue that on the basis of "culture", or use instances of failure during the mission, or the fact we aren't acting similarly in Chad, Dafur (like we have the troops...) or whatever as the excuse. It's quite another after you've been someplace like Yugo or Rwanda and had to personally look people in the eyes while telling them that you're leaving them to their fate because your countrymen safe back home said that's what you had to do. There's another life altering experience for you that most of the "withdraw!" folks are going to be incredibly fortunate enough to never have to experience. Lucky them.
Sadly Mark, in the end I believe we are going to fail in Afghanistan. Not because we couldn't defeat the Taliban in any manner of war they chose to fight - because we can. Not because we couldn't win hearts and minds - because we can. And not because we couldn't rebuild the infrastructure of the country to the point of self sufficiency and create an Afghan Army capable of kicking the Taliban's ass - because we can do that too.
We are going to fail in Afghanistan for the same reasons that the US quickly failed in Vietnam right after the overwhelming and crushing defeat they handed Giap, the North Vietnamese, and the Viet Cong during Tet. The US slaughtered the NVA, practically wiped out the Viet Cong - and promptly lost the war. We are going to fail for the same reasons: the naysayers and the optics won't look right to Canadians who want a quick, clean, bloodless victory in Afghanistan. Of course, there is no such thing as a quick, clean, bloodless victory any time you have to resort to force of arms to accomplish something, and many Canadians these days simply refuse to accept that. They want the mythical Canadian in a blue beret, who blows his whistle and everyone stops fighting and goes home. The world doesn't work that way.
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