We had Military Bases in each of them, and still do. In South Korea, are troops are just a road block, nothing more. During the Cold War, our troops stationed in Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy, were just seen as an early warning sign, because there wasn’t enough of them to actual stand up to a Soviet Invasion.
We did take over and we did Occupied Germany and Italy. And we tried to rebuild it. We had the Marshall Plan.
In Afghanistan, we put up a few schools, tried to advance women’s rights, but otherwise, it seems we have failed. Probably because the US only barely cared about the outside world after World War 2, and cares even less now.
This is sad, because we are a country of great wealth and prosperity, and we do nothing with it except help ourselves.
I am not stupid, and I certainly know that we have military bases in those countries (I and multiple members of my family have served at some of them), and I also know the difference between the nature of our current presence in e.g. Germany or the UK or South Korea and the nature of our presence in Afghanistan.
So you realized that during the Cold War, if it ever heated up, the military in Europe was just sacrificial lambs? A speed bump to the Soviet Tanks, and eventual Nuclear strikes?
What has that to do with Afghanistan?
The fact is, we aren’t willing to spend the resources in Afghanistan, like we did rebuilding Korea, Japan, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, or France.
Hopefully it’s not because they are a majority Muslim Nation.
Its dangerous to join the Military. It’s why you can retire after 20 years, and get Veterans benefits and all kinds of other things.
It sucks to put people in harm’s way, but how is Afghanistan different from other bases?
We spent either $180 billion (at today’s dollars) or $800 billion (measured as a percentage of GDP) on the Marshall Plan. We spent $2.26 trillion on Afghanistan. I don’t think the problem is how much we spent.
Because they’re a hostile military occupying presence?
Whose they? The people getting murdered for being a different ethnic minority?
There are dozens, if not hundreds of different groups living in Afghanistan, when you say ‘they’, can you be more precise?
When you starting lumping all people of the region together, that seems off.
‘They’ is the hostile military occupying force, not the Afghanis.
I’m going to put you back on ignore.
They is who?
I mean, the North Koreans are hostile to South Korean Bases. The USSR was hostile to all US bases. Pakistan is hostile to Afghanistan bases?
As the they the group propped up by the Pakistani Government?
By the way, 18 Billion in the marshal plan is around 277,000,000,000 today.
And of course, that does not include the how World War 2 thing that happened right before hand. So, arguing that the whole Afghanistan conflict should be compared to just the Marshall plan is apples to oranges. Better to compare the afghan rebuilding cost to the marshall plan.
lego, man, you are up a very strange mountain with this.
I honestly have no idea what he’s getting at.
I just don’t like the idea that there are a lot of innocent people that are going to end up dying because we cut ties. A lot of men, women and children that probably have no love for the Taliban, or the extremist group in Afghanistan, that are being targeting because they are a minority group.
I don’t know how long you need to be in a country to stabilize it, I don’t know how much it costs to make some place safe, or if you can make a place safe. But I feel like we are letting a lot of people down.
And I don’t even see the US as really responsible. A lot of this violence and bombing was going on before the US got there.
But, as a powerful nation, I kind of want the US to be a City on the Hill. I kind of want to bring democracy to more places, even if it means being there for a while.
Menzo
3014
We’ve been in Afghanistan for nearly 20 years. We’ve spent trillions of dollars. Time to come home.
You can’t save a country from itself.
I didn’t realize there was an arbitrary time limit to things.
I understand the sentiment, but I can think of only two places where this has ever worked via military occupation, and we had to totally destroy the countries and kill millions and subjugate the rest to make it work, and both of those countries had been places with some history of democracy and functioning institutions and norms before they went wrong in the first place.
Menzo
3017
Of course there’s an arbitrary time limit, unless you’re suggesting that we should never leave.
I’d love for our dollars and guns to be able to spread Democracy around the globe, too. But that’s just a fantasy. It doesn’t work. We’ve tried and tried and tried.
There is zero evidence that more money and more guns will somehow solve the problems in Afghanistan.
Yet, some how, Democracy have sprung up in unlikely places. India didn’t really have much of a history of democracy (or of being a single nation really) before, what, over 100 or more years of despotic British Colonial Rule?
God, I hope that isn’t a requirement to set up a Democracy.
I feel like the British cultural influence may have been a factor in India’s acceptance of democracy, though it has also not exactly been a smooth ride there (see the bloody partition of Pakistan and the Emergency under Indira Gandhi). Not that it’s been a particularly smooth ride here, either…
Indeed. It’s not a path I want to emulate, by any means.
It’s just the example I thought of, off the top of head as a counter point to setting up a Democracy.
Well, I hope we can save as many people as we can.
