What If America Had Never Invaded Afghanistan?

19FortyFive ^ | 8/25/2021 | Robert Farley

[Onthebrink]

Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Dr. Robert Farley is a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), and Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020).

What if the United States had never invaded Afghanistan?

The question is not as absurd as it sounds. Popular support for military retribution against Al Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks was high, but this retribution did not need to take the form of a campaign for regime change. Indeed, some senior officials in the Bush administration were notably unenthusiastic about invading Afghanistan, seeing it as a strategic backwater and far too remote to make an effective demonstration of American military might. What if the United States had taken a different path?

[marron]

Sort of like replacing the Shah of Iran with “democracy” which brought the ayatollahs.

Carter thought the ayatollah was a “natural anticommunist” and would help us open up the muslim underbelly of the Soviet Union. Brilliant.

[Verginius Rufus]

The trouble starts, in a sense, with the coup in 1973 that got rid of the monarchy. Then in 1978 there was another coup followed by the Soviet invasion in December 1979. The US thought we had to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan so we armed the mujahideen (sp), the fighters for jihad, against the Soviets.

Of course you could say the problems in Afghanistan date back much further than 1973.

[alternatives?]

Would we have then invaded Iraq?

[Salvavida]

What if the American citizenry were well informed, patriotic Americans?

[Ouderkirk]

He makes some decent points.

OTOH, if “ifs and buts” were candy and nuts, We would be at the carnival

[PLMerite]

[OTOH, if “ifs and buts” were candy and nuts, We would be at the carnival]

Or if they were fruits and nuts, we’d be in California.

[Pollard]

What if America had never gone to Korea or Vietnam or the Middle East?