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It's hard to say exactly what would have happened in Afghanistan without the distraction of Iraq, but my feeling is that making Afghanistan into a functional we
by cameldrv 3y ago
It's hard to say exactly what would have happened in Afghanistan without the distraction of Iraq, but my feeling is that making Afghanistan into a functional western style democracy with western style human rights is more like a 50-100 year project.
In Iraq though, it was always going to be messy simply because of the fact that there are three major ethno-religious groups, two of which had been long repressed. I don't know enough of the details about the 2003-2005 time period to really specifically address radical de-Baathification, but if you institute democracy in Iraq and keep the country together, you're naturally going to get de-Baathification because the Shia will vote the Sunni out. The Sunni will resent this, and as we've seen, this is how you wind up with ISIS.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago> but my feeling is that making Afghanistan into a functional western style democracy with western style human rights is more like a 50-100 year project. Easily a 50+ year project, because progress effectively happens one death at a time. A large percentage of the old guard harboring outdated ideas will simply never change. The only hope is changing the minds of the new generations.
- foobarian 3y agoIt's too bad that the borders there are leftovers from colonial map-making. I wonder what "United States of Arabia" would look like if allowed to form on their own terms.
- woooooo 3y agoThey tried a few times in the 60s (pan-arabism) but it always broke down over the question of who to put in charge.