LogFAQs > #979624364

SHRlKE posted...

Im not saying that at all. I think this just boils down to whether we think we should have a permanent presence in Afghanistan potentially forever more. I think we shouldnt. You have to rip the band aid off at some point. But thats just my opinion. If you have a different one I wont tell you youre wrong.

I have to go out soon. So I just have one more thought.

What sort of road map do you think would have been needed to ensure we left Afghanistan in a good place and it didnt revert back at least somewhere once we left? Do you even that would be possible even over another 20/30 year time span?

Just to be clear, I wasn't implying you thought the Taliban ruled the country better. I tried to phrase that question in a way that didn't seem antagonistic, so my apologies if you read it that way. This has actually been a very pleasant discussion.

To your second point involving the roadmap, I think the one key piece that was missing was industry. The US was doing a good job of propping up a government that had been elected by the people and was offering legitimate human rights to women and minorities in the country, but I'm of the opinion that one of the reasons why that government collapsed so hard is because the average person outside of the Capitol was just as poor as they had always been.

I think if the US had maintained a presence, although ideally they would have started this a decade prior, and focused on piggybacking off of all the additional education that the populace was getting to help create some sort of economic engine that wasn't dependent on foreign aid, it's possible the stability would have lasted. We also probably could have done more in the way of building public infrastructure to make it so the villages towns and tribes at the outer edge of the country weren't so extremely disconnected from the capital. If more people had the ability to get into the cities and get out you would have a greater flow of commerce and trade which would cause more money to get out to the people on the outskirts which would make them more invested in the current government.