Seriously, maybe it’s time to reconsider what is Afghanistan in terms of a country. It’s never had much of a national identity, and its modern borders were basically hammered out by the British and Russians.
South Korea is probably the only country during the Trump years that had a favorable view of Americans. Contrast that with the Japanese who hate the bases and its soldiers.
Pretty sure Japanese hatred of US bases is independent of Trump.
I would say that it’s really only the Okinawans. The average Japanese person probably doesn’t care even if they were aware that there were US soldiers present. I spent 12 years in Tokyo and don’t recall ever seeing any. Of course, I avoided the type of entertaining diversions that a young 21 year old soldier might be interested in.
I know at least one guy who married a Japanese woman while serving in Japan, so I don’t think they ALL hate American military folks.
Yeah, Okinawa is the main problem spot. A not-insignificant percentage of the island is owned or controlled by the US military. And an overly large percentage of the US military presence in Japan is on the island. A lot of Okinawans feel like the rest of Japan should shoulder some of this load.
Imagine if we jammed 4-5 major military bases on Puerto Rico that the locals didn’t want. Then imagine the situation brewing for 50 years. And every time a serviceman does a horrible crime on the island, it ratchets up the unhappiness even further.
Okinawa I guess is strategically important, but as a place in and of itself, I mean, no. No offense to the locals, but everything I’ve heard about the place makes me think it’s not shall we say the ideal retirement spot or anything. But I admit, never been there, and all I know about it comes from WWII history, the news, and a grad school friend who was a Marine Force Recon dude and messed up his knee there on a training op.
Okinawa is made of up of several island groups, the southernmost of which can be compared favorably to Hawaii.
Ah, gotcha. I guess I just kind of thought about it as a single island, stupidly enough!
A terrible story. But groups of armed men storm into communities all over the world on a frequent basis. I personally don’t think that we can be the world’s police, but it’s worth having a conversation.
We’re just generally super bad at it, and we pick and choose where we’re going to intervene poorly.
The Hazara were the majority in Afg. over a century ago, and are closer to Iran culturally and linguistically. They have been persecuted and massacred into a minority since then, opposed by most Kabul and other tribal leaders, as well as the Taliban. So it’s hard to guess who may be the attackers in this instance, since it’s a long-lived version of ethnic cleansing continuing there.
So in other words, in 1/80th of the time that we’ve spent over there in the past 20 years? Makes one wonder why we even bothered (staying).
So that for 20 years, some people had a chance?
I think every person who believes we need to be in a forever war in Afghanistan ought to get together, buy some AR-15s (it’s legal!) and charter some flights to Afghanistan. Suggest they hurry while the flights can probably still land.
You do realize there is no equivalent between some guy with a gun, and an organized military force, with training, resources, and logistics behind them, don’t you?
To make the argument that somehow they are the same, or that individuals should go do something by themselves is a terrible argument.
Arguing that developed countries have a responsibility to invest and secure in developing nations, and actually fixing the colonial crap that western powers have forced upon a nation is way different from just sending troops and the like.
This is a noble sentiment, and arguably morally justified, in the abstract. In practice, it becomes extremely complicated it seems to me. The line between helping to undo historical wrongs and continuing economic and political domination and exploitation by other means is pretty slim. “Investment” usually ends up being a dog-whistle for turning the economy into an extension of the developed nations’ resource chains. “Security” often ends up being backing one group of thugs over another, or having to impose the equivalent of martial law for indeterminate periods of time. You are right, “just sending troops” is hardly a solution. Neither is just sending accountants or IMF bureaucrats.
Part of undoing colonialism is letting countries sort things out themselves, for once, even if that means watching them pretty much commit suicide.
The one thing that has become very clear is that the US doesn’t actually have the political capacity to solve internal contradictions within nation states. IE, the US is pretty horrible at winning wars and is only good at winning battles. This is certainly due to a lack of political capacity - i’d suspect the vast majority of elected officials governing and with jurisdiction over these foreign wars have only the slightest idea of what is going on over there nor really the slightest care. The horrible truth for the rest of the world is that US military action since the 1980s has been entirely about domestic US politics, and once the domestic situation is solved or ameliorated, the US political established kinda doesn’t really care anymore.
The problem with places like Afghanistan is that what they really need is a kind of old-fashioned imperialism that imposes order upon them with a heavy hand. US policy blows things up and expects the “natives” to sort themselves out, somehow, and then become a modern country in the aftermath. When the countries are themselves wracked by pre-existing internal divisions, the US doesn’t have an answer, and to be honest, doesn’t even know what are the right questions to ask, such as “what’s the best outcome for everyone?”. Everyone hates Balfour and Sykes-Picot but at least the British gave some thought as to long term stability, however improper or ineffective. Even after Iraq 2.0, the US never worked toward an independent Kurdish state, despite basically having a de facto independent country in the north of Iraq.
US defense budget: $725 billion
US foreign aid budget: $20 billion
People gonna get bombs, not running water.