Pournelle used to refer to the president of Afghanistan as “the mayor of Kabul”. Apparently he understood the country better that our military and foreign policy elites.
Little by little, the world will be introduced to a thoroughly screwed up, but "they're gettin' there" nation of animals. >
>>(semi-) democratic, elected, but remarkably corrupt government, which as a governing class supervised an equally corrupt police, judiciary, and army. <<
For a minute there, I thought he was talking about Washington.
I wonder what’s going to happen when the Chinese start bossing the Taliban around. After all, the Chicoms are all atheists while the Taliban are hyper-religious.
Hey Taliban remember, “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.”
Many talibanimals are Anthropithecus.
The following statement is meant to sound very intelligent but is actually silly and explains nothing:
“Afghanistan as an idea is a political entity only about one hundred eighty years old”
The idea of the unified German state is only about 150 years old. Does that make that idea illegitimate to the German people?
Actually, the modern democratic nation state, the world over, is not much more than 200 years old. Is ancient history around the world more legitimate to people everywhere, than the ideas they have today about their land?
The Taliban are not different than the now deposed government of Afghanistan in wanting to unify the land, contrary to its fractured history.
The Taliban are NOT trying to preserve or respect that “anthropological” history of very distinct
peoples in the land. They want to trash the history of Afghanistan and subdue everything and everyone under Pashtun dominant, radical theocratic dominant religious tyranny. Even in past Muslim periods of Afghanistan there was less religious tyranny than with the Taliban.
If we bought all the authors arguments, the U.S. should definitely totally break up today. The idea of it being one nation is too young and does not recognize the differences among us.