The United States' bumbling, stumbling withdrawal from Kabul in the wake of the Afghan government's house-of-cards-like collapse seems to have awakened the American public, at least momentarily, from its 20 year nap regarding our involvement in Afghanistan.
Fortunately, some observers have been keeping an eye on what we've done and what we've failed to do in Afghanistan over the last two decades. Now they're weighing in with some perspective. Can we stay awake long enough to learn any lessons?
Well the CDC really messed things up when it first said the the vaccinated no longer needed to mask and be socially distant, then reversed itself and said that the Delta surge required everyone to mask and socially distant. Politicians and pundits are all over the place on these issues. Only bishops can set policy for their own dioceses; they are making all sorts of choices most often in the form of advice. That leaves it up to pastors who are also making all sorts of decisions. So naturally the laity are making all sorts of decisions for themselves. A lot of those decisions are to return to livestream Mass.
I am glad I never went back. What does community mean when you cannot trust your fellow parishioners to get vaccinated, or wear masks or be socially distant? What does pastoring mean if you cannot trust your bishop and your pastor to be very clear to everyone in the parish that they need to be vaccinated, mask and be socially distant?
Many people but not all were coming back after our first year of Covid. I think that parishes are going to have far fewer in the pews after the second year of Covid.
This article argues that the Taliban succeeded mainly because it was for resistance to foreign occupiers. With the US gone it has to fall back on its clerical command and control structure which raises the possibly of internal civil war among all its the various tribal, linguistic and communal identities not all of which have the same religious views as the Taliban clerics.
Like this author I have a great deal of skepticism about the reality of the Afghan "nation state" beyond the few people who cooperated with Western allies. Once we pulled out and the phantom national army evaporated, there is little left to the "national state" other than a bunch of Westernized people whom most Afghans view as collaborators.
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post in this article praises some unrecognized heroes of the State Department, and pushes back against the prevailing hyperbolic narrative.
And an article in The Week by Ryan Cooper takes the press to task.
There seems to be plenty of blame and finger-pointing to go around about the US exit from Afghanistan. One recurring theme has been that the Afghan soldiers don't care enough to fight for their own country. It turns out that things aren't that simple. There is an interesting article from Politico by Anatol Leiven explaining why Afghan forces quickly laid down their arms.
From the article:
Farming is a very important question.
Obviously trucking products from a farm half way around the world cost a lot in energy demands. There is also the very important question of exploitation of the land, e.g. some crops make land infertile. Also the importance of taking carbon dioxide out of the air and putting it into the ground. There is also the importance of replacing animal protein with vegetable protein in our diets.
All this seems to me to imply that we have to not let what is going on be up to the market place. Perhaps it is easier to endorse the last idea if we look at China as an actor in the marketplace who may not have our best interests at heart. Obviously they are not the only potential bad actors. So I am interested in the larger question. How do we get an American Policy on these issues. Obviously the Chinese Communist Party has a policy.
