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The amount of hubris involved here is staggering — and exactly why the neocons failed at their goals of reshaping the Middle East. Our idea of a “proper govern

The amount of hubris involved here is staggering — and exactly why the neocons failed at their goals of reshaping the Middle East. Our idea of a “proper government” may not align with the local population. This was certainly the case in Afghanistan; while yes, the Taliban are bad dudes with really regressive ideas about women, the country largely does support the Taliban for reasons that are missed by outside observers. This is inconvenient for the US, but as a key bottleneck on the Silk Road, Afghanistan has essentially always been at war and some version of the Taliban have always defended the country. Their history is romanticized locally. We didn’t really grok that when we went in; and we were absolutely shocked when the locals basically said “you guys will leave eventually and we will have to deal with the Taliban, so we can’t piss them off because we need them for the next invasion”. Whatever “proper government” we build will be made up of the unsavory characters we leave behind when we exit.

baybal2 5y ago
> the country largely does support the Taliban. It did not support Taliban. It has done so after 2 decades of Karzai, Ghani, and complete incompetence of US at building a political system, and the government from scam artists, and then doing god knows what with them. Just like in Iraq.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  If we did such a bad job in Afghanistan and Iraq why do you think the US would do a better job in Myanmar?
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  We tried to find other people. Anyone with internal support was either too religious or too communist for our tastes, so we picked Karzai and his friends in the opium trade over anyone with actual ideological support (Karzai had tepid support from the opium farmers since he was their buyer, which was good enough for the US government). If you think things would be any different in Myanmar — home of the golden triangle — you haven’t been paying attention to the lessons of the last 20 years.

baybal2 5y ago

> the country largely does support the Taliban. It did not support Taliban. It has done so after 2 decades of Karzai, Ghani, and complete incompetence of US at building a political system, and the government from scam artists, and then doing god knows what with them. Just like in Iraq.

wonderwonder 5y ago
If we did such a bad job in Afghanistan and Iraq why do you think the US would do a better job in Myanmar?
wayoutthere 5y ago
We tried to find other people. Anyone with internal support was either too religious or too communist for our tastes, so we picked Karzai and his friends in the opium trade over anyone with actual ideological support (Karzai had tepid support from the opium farmers since he was their buyer, which was good enough for the US government). If you think things would be any different in Myanmar — home of the golden triangle — you haven’t been paying attention to the lessons of the last 20 years.