I in no way stated that the Taliban unified Afghanistan as a people.Johnny Rockets wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote: My comment was in regards to the underlined. (So I should've been more clear).
It's ridiculous because what's the alternative? A world "FREE of terrorism" through the US invading Afghanistan, where the Taliban were letting Al-Qaeda use some remote mountains as their area of operations? Saudi Arabia supplies tons of funds to such terrorist groups, so why not invade them? Obviously, the US can't given the strong economic and political ties between the two countries, so what does the US do instead?
Invade Afghanistan which after decades of civil war finally had at least some form of government that appeared to be able to unify them enough. The US failed to even address the main source of funding for such groups by ignoring Saudi Arabia, so instead they threaten other countries like Iran and Iraq with declarations of war. The US since the Persian Gulf War went on occasional bombing campaigns to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq for a decade until leading up to Persian Gulf War II. Then the US actually invades them, is responsible for killing 200,000+ civilians, and is responsible for causing this ongoing civil war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, which has been resulting in more deaths.
How is the US imposing a world free of terrorism?
The US has destroyed the livelihood and standards of living for millions of Iraqis, Kurds (through double-crossing them in the Persian Gulf War, and during the Persian Gulf War II, enabling the Turks to use US-operated airbases in order to bomb their Kurds), Iranians, Somalians, Vietnamese, and on and on.
Pakistan is a main hub of anti-American terrorist groups, and once again the US is playing dangerous games over there. By bombing some "terrorist" groups and a lot of civilians, the US ends up aligning anti-American sentiment among a lot of Pakistan.
As the US has become more and more unnecessarily aggressive, it mainly adds fuel to the fire of guerrilla organizations like Al-Qaeda and various other "terrorist" sects.
How can you think that such a foreign policy of engaging in war will promote freedom? How can you think that the US imposes a world "free" of terrorism by supplementing the accounts of many dictatorships through foreign "aid"? It's completely irrational once seen from a greater context.
I agree with what you are trying to say, but using Afghanistan as an example here is a serious mistake. To say the Taliban formed a government that unified the Afghani's as a people is like saying the pre civil war Americans did a good job at organizing employment opertunities for Africans.
Try being a Christian in Afghanistan in the Taliban era. Or anyone with a university degree, or hell, just being a woman was to be subjected to brutal opression. That kind of theocratic fundamentalist bullshit needed to be stomped out ans pissed on in the worst way, and was as close to a justified was as you are ever going to get.
Johnny Rockets
I said that "... Afghanistan which after decades of civil war finally had at least some form of government that appeared to be able to unify them enough."
In others, (If I recall correctly) according to The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright, the Taliban had 70% control of Afghanistan.
What this means is that even if the government is oppressive, it's the best they could come up with, and (in my opinion) the US has no right to change it (but legality/necessity of that war is another topic). (If one would like to make the argument that they were "harboring terrorists," then the US could simply fly over the Taliban and/or launch missiles and bomb the shit out of the Al-Qaeda bases instead of fighting a protracted and ineffective war).
I will admit that the Taliban would have been most likely oppressive; however, what's the alternative? From 2002 to today, the US attempted to install a "liberal democracy," but what really happened was that the US installed a quasi-dictator Karzai with his complimenting body of warlords. These same warlords were fighting the Taliban previously, and were just as corrupt and oppressive as the Taliban.
So, the US came in and swapped one oppressive party for another. That in no way promotes freedom or even addresses the situation on effectively combating terrorism. Instead, it puts the US in the middle as a recipient of blame for directly supporting yet another oppressive state.
EDIT: Regarding your second paragraph. Sure, that may have been what happened, and to lend creedence to your argument, one could look at how beneficial or costly an Islamic Theocracy in Iran (http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/iran.htm#RECORD). In other words, "poorly" but a near international embargo on a country would drastically diminish a country's economic growth and development.
In short, the US has no right to prevent an Islamic Theocracy from rising. If the people are able to cast it off, then let them. And if you or certain organizations would like to see that happen, then donate to them. The US federal government has no right to take your money and spend it on policies that have been making things worse.
