So, I notice Biden is under fire a lot for his withdrawal frm Afghanistan. Love how the media is so biased in favor of the military industrial complex. Whenever we pull out of anything it's always "but but what about the poor people who live there who depend on us?" Uh, give them asylum and move on? I don't know why we need to spend billions of dollars a year protecting a minority of a country from a majority that clearly doesn't want us there.
And that's what it came down to. When Bush went in, Bush painted this picture of nation building of us being treated like liberators. You know, like us freeing Europe from the Nazis. Uh, no. The fact is, most people don't want us there. And while I can be FAR MORE lenient on Afghanistan than Iraq in the sense that at least we had a legitimate purpose to go into Afghanistan, given we were attacked, we fulfilled that core purpose TEN YEARS AGO. Seriously, we killed Bin Laden in 2011. It's now 2021. Time to move on.
It didn't matter if we pulled out 10 years ago. It wouldn't matter if we pulled out 10 years from now. or even 100 like the hardcore neocons seemed to want. The outcome would be the same. We tried to give them democracy, it's up to them whether it sinks or swims.
And let me explain something real fast. The Taliban are NOT Al Qaeda. THe reason we targetted the Taliban was because they controlled Afghanistan and hosted Bin Laden there and didn't take too kindly to imperial powers like the US telling them to hand him over. So we invaded and did it the hard way. You can say they had it coming at the time, but at this point, eh, fighting them is a sunk cost and there's no real benefit too continuing to do so.
Which brings us to why we should pull out. We're just wasting time, money, resources, and people by being there. War is expensive, and I'd rather use that money improving life for our own people. As Eisenhower once said, each bomb we build means less hospitals, and highways, and schools for children (paraphrasing). If the core threat is eliminated, why are we still there? Mission accomplished, go home. Sticking around "nation building" is how empires die. They overextend, waste tons of money in military conflicts that amount to nothing, and then they leave. Better we leave earlier than later.
Really, I hate to act like I don't care about what happens to the country and the people in it, but to some extent I really don't. We have a nation state system of governance. The American government exists to protect the US, its borders, and its people. It is not a charity for helping out the rest of the world. At the same time, I dont believe we should interfere more than we need to, for the sake of national security and collective international security. Afghanis can figure out Afghanistan. If they wanna return to a theocratic hellhole that's no concern of ours unless it affects us negatively. We should've gotten out 10 years ago, and Biden did a good here, no matter how messy it is. It is like vietnam, a costly occupation that ended in "losing", its almost as if history repeats itself and we shouldn't have invaded then either. Let's try not to commit any more "Vietnams", shall we?
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