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Emancipation of women wasn't the reason Afghanistan was invaded. It kind of became a sort of disingenuous revisionist justification somewhere along the line, b

Emancipation of women wasn't the reason Afghanistan was invaded. It kind of became a sort of disingenuous revisionist justification somewhere along the line, but the stated justification at the time was the Taliban were harboring al-Qaeda, particularly bin Laden. The whole of it seems quite farcical to me, particularly in retrospect, but I wouldn't equivocate it with Russia's invasion of Ukraine because I don't think the American government ever intended on annexing Afghanistan territory. It does however resemble the Soviet Union's own invasion of Afghanistan to topple the (then communist) government of Afghanistan. In that case there was also a fig leaf of humanitarianism, since the PDPA, lead by Taraki and Amin, were massacring civilians and generally losing control of the country. Taraki evidently got cold feet and requested a Soviet intervention, but was subsequently assassinated at Amin's order before that occurred. The assassination of Taraki and the PDPA's general inability to stop murdering people served as the Soviet justification for the invasion. Of course the reality of the invasion was not particularly humanitarian, but the same can be said of the American invasion. Anyway, all of it was and is shameful and none of it excuses the rest of it.

EGreg 4y ago
It's actually worse than that. If we cared about emancipation of girls from Muslim Radicals then we could just do NOTHING because Afghanistan had a revolution and a secular government back in the 80s. Which called USSR for help because muslim radicals didn't like the reforms. Instead, we funded the Mujahideen (who were, ahem, Muslim radicals) and told them to carry on a holy war against their government and the commies. We gave them stinger missiles. USA and Saudis also trained foreign fighters "Afghan Arabs" to go and wreak havoc. In the years that followed, up to 2 million Afghan CIVILIANS DIED. And the country was then ravaged by war, and became home to Al Qaieda the very organization that attacked us. But it's actually worse than that. In 2001 we went over there ourselves because we wanted Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban told the USA: "just provide proof that Osama was behind 9/11", and let's have a court case in a neutral third country. (You know, like they do in The Hague etc.) USA and Bush admin said: "We know he's guilty. We will give you no proof!" Then in December of 2001 (that same year!) the Taliban said "we unconditionally surrender! We will disband! All we ask is for you to let us live our lives out in dignity." The USA said in their great wisdom: "NOPE" Then we fought for 20 years the very group we ceded Afghanistan to last year. And to think, all we had to do is ACCEPT THEIR UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER and we would have saved trillions. And those girls would have been educated! https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanistan-taliban-deal-united-states.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanis...

EGreg 4y ago

It's actually worse than that. If we cared about emancipation of girls from Muslim Radicals then we could just do NOTHING because Afghanistan had a revolution and a secular government back in the 80s. Which called USSR for help because muslim radicals didn't like the reforms. Instead, we funded the Mujahideen (who were, ahem, Muslim radicals) and told them to carry on a holy war against their government and the commies. We gave them stinger missiles. USA and Saudis also trained foreign fighters "Afghan Arabs" to go and wreak havoc. In the years that followed, up to 2 million Afghan CIVILIANS DIED. And the country was then ravaged by war, and became home to Al Qaieda the very organization that attacked us. But it's actually worse than that. In 2001 we went over there ourselves because we wanted Osama Bin Laden. The Taliban told the USA: "just provide proof that Osama was behind 9/11", and let's have a court case in a neutral third country. (You know, like they do in The Hague etc.) USA and Bush admin said: "We know he's guilty. We will give you no proof!" Then in December of 2001 (that same year!) the Taliban said "we unconditionally surrender! We will disband! All we ask is for you to let us live our lives out in dignity." The USA said in their great wisdom: "NOPE" Then we fought for 20 years the very group we ceded Afghanistan to last year. And to think, all we had to do is ACCEPT THEIR UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER and we would have saved trillions. And those girls would have been educated! https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanistan-taliban-deal-united-states.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanis...