At some point imperialists will eventually cotton on to the fact that their puppet governments are that ab initio at best.
Imperial puppet regimes are corrupt by definition. That’s their point from the perspective of the colonised.
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India made a comparatively successful transition from colony to nation, despite being a diverse mixture of peoples. But even after ~200 years of occupation they still ended up partitioned into several states which have fought several wars against each other.
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I think the only thing that is preventing another “boat people” situation is that Afghanistan is land-locked. Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, none of the neighbours are going to be willing to see an influx of refugees.
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Like some have mentioned earlier the Taliban have been planning for 20 years.
“The Taliban now control some ten international crossing points. In addition to Zaranj, they have Spin Baldak, a gateway to Pakistan; Islam Qala, the main crossing point to Iran; and Kunduz, which confers control of the routes north to Tajikistan.”
“The Taliban now control many of the key parts of the economy – the main poppy growing regions, as well as markets and trading routes to Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan – enabling them to systematically tax different points along commodity chains.”
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My point is really about the myths imperialists tell themselves to justify their imperialism. They are obviously false and self serving, but remarkably consistent across the centuries and resistant to critique by history. For example members of the current English regime are fond of opining that Africa could do with more genocidal English rule to sort it out.
Absolutely insane and evil, but still acceptable in polite society it seems.
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The occupations of West Germany and Japan were successful because:
- Total destruction of both countries prior to occupation.
- Populations of both countries did not want any more war
- Actual efforts to build up German and Japanese industry with Germans and Japanese people in them. Not just an attempt to create puppets who buy American shit (though that happened also).
- Marshall Plan. Note: That didn’t involve pushing pallets of cash off the back of a truck, nor did it include hiring mercenaries on a massive scale.
- The US and others needed Germany and Japan to succeed because they were afeared of the USSR and China. That was not the case this time around, so instead they tried to loot and profiteer.
I’d say the occupation of East Germany, Hungary, Czechosolovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland etc. went much less well and did involve a lot of brutal suppression for a long time, and ultimately failed because the locals didn’t want them there.
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Yeah, I agree, US funded unions and Avant Garde music in Germany let alone reconstruction.
Military bases were not the main commercial concern.
Unlike modern occupations. It’s why China is a preferred partner.
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Sorry - I don’t know, it was found on a google search. 
Right?
We should not have launched a ground invasion in the first place. The Taliban ran a terrible government, but we helped put them in charge. We could have used other methods to change how they functioned as a government and moderated them to some degree. It’s not like our government actually gives a shit about Afghan women and girls, or else we would not support the Saudi government which is only marginally better on women’s rights, and that’s ONLY because they are a wealthy country.
There were NO good answers here. Going in at all was dumb. Leaving the way Trump planned it was dumber. People are eager to pin this ALL on Biden, but the reality is that once Trump announced his deal with the Taliban, we were locked in, because Biden gives more of a shit about continuity than Trump ever did.
He DID. He was the one who cut the deal with the Taliban. I suspect Biden would have also sought a way out, but he would not have cut the US backed government out of the picture that way Trump did. They might ahve been able to at least bring both sides to the table to work out a deal based on our exit instead of a bilateral deal with the Taliban that Trump got.
They do, but only some are.
I think that’s correct, actually. Again, his bilateral deal fucked the Afghan government. It should have been within the confines of the negotiations between the 3 parties. And NATO should have been part of that too.
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Well, I do think we assumed we’d actually be gone before they took the country over. Having them take it over while we are still there is a less than optimal outcome.
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Supposedly the US left with the Taliban massively outnumbered by the loyal Afghan forces. What have THEY been doing for the past 20 years?
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20 years in Afghanistan?
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Graveyard of empires, indeed.
Almost as if the past 20 years, trillions of dollars from American taxpayers, thousands of dead Americans, and hundreds of thousands of dead Afghans were all a complete waste. We’re right back to where we were 20 years ago – except UBL is now dead (and wasn’t even in Afghanistan when he got killed) and Trump signed a peace treaty with the Taliban. Hardly seems worth it.
#america
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And just a reminder: Al Qaeda ≠ Taliban. The former was a tech-savvy international terrorist organization with agents that could blend invisibly into modern Western society, the latter was (and remains) a culturally and technologically regressive bunch of religious zealots who had neither the capability or ambition to strike the U.S. or our allies on our own soil.
The United States could have sought vengeance against Osama Bin Laden and his organization without getting mired in a full-scale war in Afghanistan. Hell, he hadn’t even been in that country for years by the time U.S. forces finally caught up with him.
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Afghanistan was always going to be a fucking disaster. The thing that enrages me is this:
We’ve learned nothing at all over the last… well, ever I guess. But we could still keep our word to the people who risked their lives for us, even while we admit that we never had the first clue what we were doing there or how we would define success.
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We’ve brought some over.
شکر
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I’m sort of curious how long after the predictable results in Iraq and Afghanistan it will be before America is ready to say blame pacifists or something and try again.
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It’s a start. But I will not be even a little bit surprised if we quietly drop the whole thing once the spotlight has moved onto something brighter and shiner.
Not long at all I expect. Here’s David French bemoaning the American “pacifism that reconceives the military as essentially armed cultural engagement” in the National Review in 2015:
Given the combination of a military stripped of many of its best tools and tactics and then tasked with accomplishing the culturally impossible, is it any wonder our conflicts grind on and on? Even hampered by absurd rules of engagement, we’re of course too strong to face military defeat, but we also render ourselves too weak to truly win. Nor will we ever have the ability to remake violent, tribal societies within the timeframe demanded by political and economic realities.
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at least there’s this:
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