Think of Malaysia and imagine the country being invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union for 10 years and then invaded and occupied by America for 20 more years. What do you think Malaysia would look like today? Would it be the thriving Muslim country that it is? Or would it look destitute like Afghanistan?
Of course, it would look destitute like
Afghanistan. That’s because its population could not be spending its time and
energy fighting a mighty enemy, and build a thriving economy at the same time.
But why is it important to think about that
now? It’s important because there are people who justify America’s forever wars
by writing ignorant and asinine passages like the following:
“When the Taliban ruled
Afghanistan, girls were banned from attending school. As of 2020, 3.5 million
out of 9 million students were girls. Between 2005 and 2017, the female
literacy rate nearly doubled. As of 2020, there were 70,000 women teachers. The
gains were not limited to women. Life expectancy had jumped from 56 to 65. The
mortality rate for children under five decreased from more than 50 percent to
28 percent. Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product tripled between 2002 and 2019.
After the American and NATO intervention, Kabul hosted film festivals, art
exhibits, and new universities. In 2014, a group of young female orphans formed
the Zohra Orchestra. It’s a mistake to say America fought a 20-year war only
for an orchestra or female literacy or Kabul film festivals”.
Good show. But how do these people know what
Afghanistan would have looked like, were it not invaded by the Soviet Union and
by America? Would it have been a Yemen or a Malaysia? Nobody can tell. And
anyone that pretends they can, is a mental case. By the way, the passage above was
excerpted from a long article that came under the title: “Giving up on the
Good-Enough War,” and the subtitle: “Why we chose to lose in Afghanistan.” It
was written by Eli Lake, and published in the October issue of Commentary
Magazine.
What’s wrong with these people, anyway? What makes
them believe that Afghanistan would have remained static without America’s
intervention while the countries surrounding it would have modernized? We find
answers to that question by combing the Eli Lake article.
What we find is an incensed writer who
rejects the notion advanced by none other than the President of the United
States, a notion to the effect that the United States has no special gifts for
“taming” other countries. To people like Eli Lake, thinking in these terms,
equates America with the powers that tried to subjugate Afghanistan but failed.
Being a Jew who thinks of America as an adjunct to Israel, he cannot accept the
idea that America has failed because if he did, it would mean that he believes Israel
can also fail … and this is an impossibility in his system of beliefs.
And so, for that reason and a few others, Eli
Lake wholeheartedly rejects President Joe Biden’s quip to the effect that,
“it’s up to the people of Afghanistan to decide the government they want, not
us to impose the government on them.” To Eli Lake, Afghanistan can only be
tamed by Jewish America.
To
buttress his argument, Lake has done an about face. Whereas he used to stand
with the people who propagated the insult that Arabs hate America because
America loves freedom, and the Arabs hate freedom, he seems to repudiate this
idea now. Those who said these
things don’t say it anymore, but they were the Jews that used to drool, as they
still do, hoping that America will bribe more Arab countries to agree having
normal relations with Israel. Instead of repeating what they used to propagate,
those people have modified the old saying to sound like this now: The Muslims
prevent their people from voting because they hate democracy, and democracy
requires that people vote. And so, Eli Lake has distanced himself from those
propagandists, as seen in the following condensed passage:
“The Afghans never
wanted democracy. If they did, their army would have fought for it. How does
this theory account for Afghans such as Hamed Kohistani? He is a doctor at a
Kabul hospital who said that the problem is not waiting, the problem is security.
The longer you wait in line, the more the risk is. Throughout the seven
national Afghan elections, the Taliban waged a war on voting itself. They
warned Afghans on social media and official communiqués not to show up on
Election Day. They targeted poll workers and police chiefs. They sent
volunteers and conscripts with suicide vests and car bombs to polling stations.
And in the territories the Taliban outlawed voting entirely. Yet millions of
Afghans showed up to cast their ballots anyway”.
This demonstrates that the Muslim Afghans do
not hate voting. The Taliban opposed the voting process because what they saw
was an exercise instituted by the American enemy they were fighting.
In fact, the Americans could have distributed
bottles of water on a hot summer day, and the Taliban would have counselled their
people not to drink.
As weird as it looks and sounds, this is as
much human nature as the Republicans who would rather die than get vaccinated
with a Biden vaccine.
Do you get the point?