next »

[mellyrn]

I hope Somalia isn't some kind of AnCap poster child, it's not a nice place to live, nor to be neighbor to, it's apparent stability is actual a case of SNAFU: the N is for "normal" after all.

Steady, guy.  Somalia has been cited in previous posts in this very forum as an example of why AnCap "can't" work -- on account of so much violence, warlords hogging everything, and so on.  So when I found an article (did you read it, at all?  It's not terribly long), a thoughtful study showing that a) the serious violence died down within a year or two of the fall of the government and is now no worse than in at least one actual state and b) things are significantly better in most metrics than they were before the government fell ("cheapest, clearest cell phone calls on the continent"* -- emphasis added), I couldn't resist bringing it up to say, "Hey, those things that 'everybody knows' about Somalia?  They ain't so!"  Which is too often the case with what 'everybody knows'.

Now, if someone takes "there has been improvement (over conditions under government)" to mean "things are sooo perfect now!", that's out of my hands.  Caricaturing someone's argument may make for a good rhetorical trick, but it's not so useful for acquiring genuine understanding of one's world.


*the improved longevity and health is surely more important than the cell phone coverage, it's just that 'best cell phoneage on the continent' amused me more.

[Andreas]

I had missed the earlier references to Somalia, I think.
I agree that that's interesting. It'd be more interesting if it had been on another continent, though. Random violence is less dangerous than planned violence a la Darfur, so the lack of government does have that going for it.
The pirates are local heroes for bringing wealth into the country. Sort of like the email scammers in Nigeria.

[quadibloc]

Anybody remember a place called Yugoslavia?  What if "Afghans" no more want an "Afghanistan" than "Yugoslavs" wanted a "Yugoslavia"?  Should outsiders force them to be a single nation anyway?

I'm not aware that this is an issue. It is an issue in Iraq. If the country were partitioned, the Sunnis and the Shi'ites could be protected from each other's radicals.

The article notes, "Those who backed the NATO side in Afghanistan will suffer political persecution once NATO forces leave...."  Well, duh.  Any time you invade someone else's land, for whatever reason, there will be those who collaborate with you and those who oppose you.  If you win, the collaborators get to persecute the opponents.  If you lose, the collaborators suffer.  Gee, who coulda guessed.

There is no military solution to this problem -- some bright guy once observed that we can't solve a problem with the same sort of thinking that created it.

The problem is unacceptable. Because the U.S. needs to show that it can be trusted so that it will always have no trouble finding people to collaborate with it, without having to lean on them in ways that would interfere with U.S. soft power.

So it needs to solve the problem - and the solution is force. Just as an effective police force protects us from criminals, the people of Afghanistan need to be safe from the Taliban.

No "thinking" on our part got us into the problem. Osama bin Laden, by organizing the 9/11 attacks, and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, by sheltering him, got us into the problem.

The solution to the problem is to ensure there will never be another 9/11, because none of the sort of people who might think of causing one are running around loose anywhere. The people who are at large will be those who are in full agreement with ordinary Americans that freedom and peace are what is best for everyone's prosperity.

Of course, this does assume that we sincerely want equal rights for everyone, and we don't intend to steal the resources from certain countries and inflict repressive regimes on them - because if that were the case, indeed, the problem would be perpetuated, not fixed. But given that the detractors of the U.S. have tended to be apologists for really repressive regimes like Stalin's Russia and Mao's China, I've been convinced in the past that the U.S., though not perfect, is basically the shining democracy it presents itself as.

The trouble is, though, that it's people have democratically decided, after Vietnam, that they don't want another draft. I'm worried that this is going to turn out as badly as the impairment in patriotic ardor that France experienced after World War I - which led to it fallling so quickly in World War II.

[Andreas]

No, it certainly was this US thinking that meddling worldwide is a good idea which got you into this.
Reagan sent Osama to Afghanistan, remember? Your meddling created him and his network. The CIA training certainly helped him create a network so resistant to attack.
It's similar to how Israeli meddling created Hamas. They were trying to weaken the PLO, and that certainly succeeded. Never thought they'd have to negotiate with them, though. They were counting on Hamas being so radical that they'd finally have an excuse to level the west bank once and for all, they didn't expect that the world at large would be on to their plans and have the guts to say "No, no you won't"

[quadibloc]

Reagan sent Osama to Afghanistan, remember? Your meddling created him and his network.

Although this has been disputed, in any case it wasn't the United States that told Russia to invade Afghanistan.

[myrkul999]

Reagan sent Osama to Afghanistan, remember? Your meddling created him and his network.

Although this has been disputed, in any case it wasn't the United States that told Russia to invade Afghanistan.

No, it wasn't. but the US did provide training and weapons to people who they would later leave out to dry. Good plan. Arm them, train them, and then make enemies out of them. Either they didn't plan farther than their nose, or they intentionally created an opposing force. While I do ascribe to Hanlon's Razor, I have to wonder.

[mellyrn]

the U.S. needs to show that it can be trusted

Too late.