No there wasn't. There hasn't been "Peace in the Middle East" in a long time. Large areas of the Middle East now are basically just parking lots where people struggle to survive with basically no sense of national identity or care, because they just don't want to be bombed, raped or enslaved... The only reason it has slowed down at all is that most of the groups already have either fled, suffered genocide, died from bombing or bad water, are slaves or hide in fear.
So should the US have just kept a permanent military base of operations in Kabul forever? <--actual question, not snark
I can't believe that dude literally said there was peace in the Middle East the past four years. What alternate reality does this @RKREBORN kid live in?
So? That doesn't preclude the Chinese directly or through the influence of the then Soviet Union from capturing Japan or strongly influencing their culture and government. Nothing is ever black and white, but after WWII the situation in Japan has been about as peaceful and prosperous as could have been expected. That does not mean that the US should indefinitely stay in Japan.... but has the USA abandoned Japan with limited resources it would have likely ended up quite different.
The U.S. "****ed" Afghanistan for 20 years. Yea, I totally disagree with this and it frustrates me to keep seeing similar sentiments. The U.S. came to that county, spent trillions of dollars and thousands of lives in an attempt to help bring modern representative government to Afghanistan. A form of governance which would give human rights and dignity to children, women, homosexuals and other vulnerable people. The problem is, the leadership in that country are the most inept, cowardly, corrupt and greedy bunch of pedo-ass mfers I've ever heard about who don't have a single altruistic bone in their collective bodies. The concepts of coming together, working together, compromising and putting the future of their country and people before themselves/their backwards ass beliefs is totally lost on them. Some of the most loathsome people on the face of the planet. It's tragic for all the wonderful people in Afghanistan but they have way too many total shitbags in positions of power.
Absolutely he is the one who decided to make it a ridiculous plan to install western democracy. Blame Obama. Too chicken****to withdraw. Trump and Biden of course has some influence over Obama. Hey, some defense company CEO's and a few thousand Afgans now living abroad cleaned up. Hopefully we will wait a bit for another elective war or prolonged occupation.
It's hard to establish a culture you find acceptable in a region that has experienced war for half a century with multiple superpowers wrecking it.
We came there to fight Al Qaeda, and the Taliban for standing in the way. We only later went with the whole idea of creating democracy there, which like the vast majority of places we tried to change the government, we failed miserably. At the end of the day, we are foreign invaders, which is a hard sentiment to overcome.
This is revisionist. We wanted Bin Laden. Taliban said he had safe harbor and would not hand him over. We said **** you and joined the northern alliance in their civil war to other throw the Taliban and establish a liberal democracy as was the stated goal of PNAC and neoconservatives. We then “hunted” down Al Qaeda and Taliban until we re-focused on Saddam for “WMD” and completely wrecked that country as well. I don’t know if Iraq is better of today than under Saddam for the Sunnis but it’s definitely better for the Southern Shia and Northern Kurds.
OK, 1) The Brits and other colonialists drew up the borders often so they could keep control after they withdrew. E.g Creating Kuwait to split the big oil fields out of historical greater Baghdad. 2) 90% of the bombing was done by the US or by our weapons. ) As far as bad water Clinton blocked chlorine and sanitation to Iraq back in the day. see 4) the genocide in Iraq and Syria were a direct result of Bush-Cheney's immoral blunder.
That's not the U.S. "failing them" and that's not what anyone means when they say the U.S. "failed" them.
I'm not making any claims about "failing them". My reply to your comment was only addressing your claims of a inferior culture in Afghanistan and explaining that 50 years of land invasions does that. Culture is nothing more than a group of humans expressing their responses to the environmental and economic conditions they face as a group. So unless you believe these people are inherently inferior, then the culture is merely a result of the past 50 years of land invasions.
You're being pedantic. Even if you're technically correct we didn't "Go there to do that" - at some point that changed... and we spent 18+ years and trillions attempting to do that.
Afghanistan being run by shitbag rulers who are some of the loathesome people on the face of the earth goes back much further then 50 years.
