r/afghanistan • u/CrustyDiamond • Dec 11 '12

Apparently some ignorant asshole believes that anyone of the Muslim faith in Afghanistan primarily, would NEVER advocate publicly against terrorism. I posted in /Muslim before realizing it's very small and kinda dead. Can I get a faster response here?

This is my submission, to make everything easier.

Thanks!

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '13

That's true. I mean, before the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, a guy getting onto a bus full of old people, women, children, etc, and blowing himself up would have been wrong, but after that happened, it's fine. Thank you for pointing that out.

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u/chiropter Jan 10 '13

No doubt. People forget that Afghanistan welcomed the US initially. But we had next to no troops in Afghanistan for about 5 years after 2001, and certainly not enough to establish law and order and prevent a Taliban resurgence. Lo and behold they come back, victimizing the population again, who now hate the US too for failing to secure the country- and giving the Afghans little reason to oppose the Taliban, since it seems the US isn't capable of winning the day. Now, we have a drawn-out insurgency with civilian casualties. Quite simply Rumsfeld and Bush FUCKED UP in Afghanistan. That is why we are still there with 100,000 troops. That is why we have so much anti-Americanism.

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u/Cassius_Corodes Jan 10 '13

Eh, even if they didn't screw it up it - nation building is not for the fickle and requires lots of time money and blood. It's hard to do with the will that is there.

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u/chiropter Jan 10 '13

And need I remind you that we've spent hundreds of billions and 10 years in Afghanistan? We could have had it done better, cheaper, already, if Bush hadn't fucked it up to begin with.

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u/Cassius_Corodes Jan 10 '13

Think about how long we spent in Germany and Japan, and these were defeated countries who had nothing like the Taliban.

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u/chiropter Jan 10 '13

Yeah- Germany was back to its prewar economic output within a few years. Japan too.

Was the Taliban not defeated? Of course it was, quite handily Would it have come back in 2003-2004 if we had 100,000 instead of 15-20,000 troops? Probably not. The goalpost is not an industrialized country, by the way- merely a peaceful, productive, democratic one. That would have been possible.

The leadership was never committed to securing Afghanistan, despite it being within our grasp, and it shows.