Realistically, though, there was what looked very much like an act of war on American soil. We had this gigantic military sitting around. We were definitely going to invade some country. It seemed like a good choice at the time?
No. No it did not.
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My memory was a bit hazy about why the US and friends decided to invade Afghanistan in the first place. Wasn’t there some sort of plan to do this drawn up in 1998 or so? Having to do with an oil pipeline?
Ah, here it is…
In 1998, Unocal signed a deal with the Taliban to build an 890-mile natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, but the plan was thwarted by continuing civil war. Unocal informed the Department of Energy that the gas pipeline would not proceed until “an internationally recognized government was in place in Afghanistan.”
https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/afghanistan_its_about_oil/
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I remember the time. It was a choice that a hurt and angry country was easily talked into by a bloodthirsty government eager to make “a new American century”, but still a choice that countless people understood was going to be terrible. There is very little of the outcome in Afghanistan and Iraq that was not being said in 2001. It doesn’t deserve to be treated as an innocent mistake.
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Well, that was bound to appear as a big “pro” in the eyes of the Trump administration.
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Just an annotation: total military destruction. The administrative structures survived mostly intact, and were kept that way. And kept on working (as good as they could) under new management.
(Not handling things in a similar way was the cardinal mistake in Iraq.)
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Iran manages to.
Oh no, wait. They periodically have reform governments who then lose ground when the US does some idiotic posturing for internal politics reasons. Never mind.
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Strange. I was a teenager at the time and still saw clearly enough to protest against it.
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India, Indonesia, Singapore etc… are exceptions in that during their colonial period local rule was under the same families and structures as before and these survived decolonization as well. That gave a continuity and stability that most other former colonies never had.
Both Gandhi and Sukarno were of aristocratic and Brahmin stock after all.
In most African regions OTOH Western colonisation destroyed all old institutions, build up new western ones that were abandoned when the western nations left. And that creates chaos.
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Heck, we used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq because of some crazy neo-con dream of “remaking the Middle East.” But yeah, when you have a hammer, you start looking for people with nail shaped hats.
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I wonder if there’s some think-tank somewhere salivating over the difficulties that this will cause Iran & Pakistan, along with China having its own pop at the Graveyard and it turning out about as well as all the other attempts. It’s exactly the kind of deeply cynical evil that would help motivate the sacrifice of an entire country full of frightened civilians.
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Just no. You could say the same for Spanish imperialism in Mexico if you wanted to. Imperialism ALWAYS relies on local traitors enriching themselves allying with the invaders. Details vary. That doesn’t.
India was systematically impoverished by the East India company and then direct imperial control. The country was looted, and the people starved in their tens of millions. After independence millions died in the inevitable mismanagement of that process (in particular by the child abuser sex trafficker Mountbatten). Indonesia had a US sponsored genocide…
Imperialism is always evil. The colonists are never the good guys.
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The pay is probably very good.
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The Great Salt Hedge was just one of the grifts perpetrated on the peoples of India
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I’d forgotten about that. It’s just so shameless isn’t it? And at the same time they were lecturing people about how great they were. I find it astounding that Nazi apologism and holocaust denial is rightly vilified and even illegal in some circumstances, but imperialism and slavery apology isn’t. Members of the current English imperial regime regularly praise England’s genocidal interventions in Africa and Asia and the only racism scandal in recent English politics involved a lifelong anti racism activist who openly failed to support an apartheid regime.
ETA
I mean there are fucking statues of fucking slavers all over the place. That is absolutely just like having statues of Hitler for me.
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Ah, the American right just loves the old “stab in the back” myth, doesn’t it. It’s been a recurring feature to explain every foreign policy failure since WW2. I wonder where on earth they picked that idea up.
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Not just the American right! Nazi party foundational myth right there.
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I never said they were, now did I? When you are done building your straw man read again.
But to explain my position further with facts:
India still has several ancient ruling families (Mewar, Wadiyar, Jodhpur…) that were in power before, during, and after the colonial period. Not only did they survive but the systems of their rule and administration did too. The continuity and stability this created helped these nations through the decolonisation period.
I know this is not popular in certain areas in Asia, Max Havelaar (the book) or example was illegal in Indonesia because it pointed out European rule rested on the cooperation of the local native elite and Sukarna prefered people would forget that but … facts and all that 
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