Quote:Of course they are, but the taliban are merely a symptom - a reaction to forces that are anything but democratic.
The Taliban are a symptom of Islam. Abu shared their view on democracy and freedom. Not because the Americans or Russians killed all his relatives. Because he is a Muslim.
Quote:You say the taliban fight against democracy and freedom, but above all else the taliban are a movement of unity and national independence.
Crap. The Americans want to give them national independence and unity. They want to get out of there. The Taliban are fighting tooth and nail against it. The Taliban want it their way, and are willing to kill as many fellow Afghan Muslims as it takes to get their way. The Taliban are trying to keep the Americans there, because ongoing war is one of the things they want. They don't want independence, they want to do to the Americans what they did to the Russians, and are willing to sacrifice everything for it.
Quote:And the key is not to concentrate on what the taliban stand for, but the circumstances in which they thrive. From the time it formed in 1994, it has represented the resistance to chaotic warlordism, corruption and foreign meddling.
How is fighting tooth and nail against democracy an opposition to foreign meddling? There is a very clear path for Afghans to run Afghanistan themselves. The Taliban is the only thing standing in their way. It is the Taliban that makes the Afgan government dependent on foreign power. The Taliban are not doing this because they are retarded and do not see the way forward. They are doing it because they are fundamentally opposed to freedom and democracy. Democracy will destroy the Taliban, and the Taliban are willing to destroy Afghanistan in their desperation to cling to power.
Quote:Democracies have not "sprung up" in Afghanistan or Iraq - not by a long shot. Suggest you look at whats happening in Iraq recently - close to half the country is occupied by Al-Qaeda affiliates, a direct response to the marginalisation of the sunni minority by a corrupt and dysfunctional shia government taking orders from Iran.
Luckily they are a democracy, and can vote in a better lot soon.
Quote:As to why we spent so long in those two countries - mainly, I suggest, because the US's attempts to install an undemocratic client regime of unrepresentative stooges
We spent that all that time in there establishing democracy because that was the only end game our society would support. It does not make sense to establish a client regime at the same time as establishing the institution by which the locals can easily turf it out. Reality just does not penetrate with you.
Quote:Giving such a game up is quite easy, and eminently sensible once all meaningful resistance to occupation and cultural dominance has been eliminated.
What motives are you projecting on the west? It's like you swallowed some idiotic communist pamphlet and lost the ability to think for yourself. The west gave up slavery because it was ideologically opposed to slavery. The west gave up similar extractive institutions to slavery because we are ideologically opposed to them. The wealth, and consequent military superiority of the west are a result of, not a cause of, these changes in our society.
Quote:It also enables people who are basking in the prosperity of our cultural dominance to claim the moral high ground - much like you are doing now.
We can claim the moral high ground because we are morally superior. We did not buy this moral superiority. Our moral superiority bought our wealth.