Afghanistan

Our intervention in Afghanistan did accomplish the main goal—to remove Afghanistan as a location where Al-Quaeda could grow, but our nation-building effort failed because we underestimated the persistence of the Taliban, the necessarily slow process of changing the local culture, and the loyalty of Afghanis to Islam (of the Taliban variety), while we overestimated the attractiveness of our way of life to Afghanis. We would have been better off cleaning out Al-Quaeda and then keeping that status through air and missile strikes rather than trying to create what was going to be, in effect, a new culture and country. I’m all for supporting peoples around the globe in their efforts to achieve democratic independence, but only a tiny number of Afghanis were asking us to do what we did. The situation of women in Afghanistan certainly seems reprehensible to us, but culture change is slow, and we are loathe to accept that. I will continue to press for Afghanis to have what are considered in the rest of the world as basic human rights, while not closing our eyes to the needs for humanitarian aid in that country.