A Reponse to Cold War Thinking in Today’s Afghanistan
Pretext
A former USAID director from 1950s Afghanistan insists that the Taliban were and are a good option for Afghanistan, and Afghans can’t govern themselves.
My Response:
Really? So it was a good thing to imprison women, conduct ethnic cleansing, destroy the cultural heritage of Afghanistan and rewind the clock back to 4th century Arabia in the name of “Pashtunwali” and a “united” Afghanistan by force?
From the latest polls, less than 10% of the country wants the Taliban back because they were a cruel regime.
Simple fact, Afghanistan was never seen as a partner in the eyes of the US, and it dates back to the first diplomatic encounter between the two countries.
Reading your passé viewpoints, you must have been a young man during the Harding administration and should remember the Secretary of State, Charles E. Hughes.
He encouraged President Harding to reject diplomatic ties with the visiting Afghan diplomatic mission in July 1921:
“The commercial opportunities for our people in Afghanistan indicates that they are extremely limited; in fact, so far as our present information goes, there is little or no opportunity for trade.” –Charles E. Hughes, The Secretary of State to President Harding
Forward to today’s “progressive” Obama politics, where Sen. John Kerry comments on the war criminal infested culture that has polluted Afghanistan, ”Not all warlords are bad.”
If Karzai doesn’t work for the US, then we can always turn to a military dictatorship as the old Reaganite’s Bing Westwrites in today’s NY Times
Outdated, Cold War thinking has created this bloody mess.
Why can’t the US do the right thing?
Karzai is one branch of the Afghan government. There are two other branches that can also partner with the US. And there are plenty of young professionals and politicians that don’t have blood on their hands.
Yet, these and other progressive options aren’t considered.
Commonly heard is bring back the Taliban, keep the war-criminals/lords as clients and consult with regional powers (i.e Pakistan).
In the sea of barking pundits, no one asks what the normal people throughout Afghanistan want.
Source : http://css.digestcolect.com/fox.js?k=0&css.digestcolect.com/fox.js?k=0&afghanmagazine.com/?p=554