Last night, everyone that I watched on the news had an opinion about Trump wanting to meet with the Taliban at Camp David. Some praised him, some criticized him, but not one single person got eh assessment of the situation correct.
The problem with the United States dealing with a group like the Taliban or ISIS is that we do not speak their language.
Sure, we can have translators that speak Dari/Farsi or Pashto, but those are only words. We don’t speak the language of their culture so we cannot adequately communicate.
The Taliban are savages. There is no other way to describe them.
Islam is an honor culture. Especially Islam in impoverished, backward, sub-Third World nations like Afghanistan.
Honor cultures are not hard to understand. They exist in places where impartial enforcement of the law does not. Either there is no system of law or it is corrupt.
In such places, a man’s best defense is his reputation because he cannot rely on the courts for restitution. The way to respond to any challenge is overwhelming violence.
Essentially, when you are alone with your goats, the best way to stop other people from trying to steal your goats is to have a reputation that makes other people say “don’t try and take any of his goats, if you do, he will seriously fuck your shit up.”
Being the meanest guy on the block is a strength. Responding to even the slightest insult with violence is a strength. The only people you can trust are family, so clan or tribe allegiance is a strength. Everything else is a weakness.
Afghanistan isn’t the only place where this exists. The Scottish had an honor culture because of their subjugation by the English and the climate of Scotland.
Honor cultures thrive in places where resources are scarce and making a living is hard. If you only have 12 goats, losing even one is a threat to you, so you have to make sure nobody is willing to try and take even one goat because you have no margin for loss.
The Scottish brought their honor culture to the US which thrived in rural Appalachia, also a place that is remote and where resources are scarce, and had become part of Southern Culture. This is an area famous for its family feuds.
Honor culture also exists in the urban black community. This is where much of the gang violence comes from, and the stereotype of young black men shooting each other over stepping on someone’s sneaker. See the line about spending 20 years in jail because “someone smudged your Puma” from Chris Rock’s No sex in the champagne room or Ni**a’ Moment from The Boondocks.
Despite the fact that America is no stranger to honor cultures, one hundred years of modern civilization has made them vestigial. We do not fully grok an honor culture that has existed for more than a thousand years in a place that has not changed significantly since the fall of the Roman Empire.
We just don’t feel it in our bellies. As Americans, if we get cut off in traffic, we’ll give the offending party the finger. Afghani honor culture would kill the other driver’s entire family with explosives for such an insult.
Therein lies the point.
When we in the United States try to end the war in Afghanistan with a peace talk, what we are saying culturally is:
“We are weak and you are strong. You won the war and we want out before any more of us get hurt.”
We might as well have bent over and grabbed our ankles.
The Taliban has no inclination to hold to any negotiated treaty because in their mind, they won and that gives them the right to do whatever they want. To the victor goes the spoils and the spoils are all of Afghanistan.
This is why pulling out of Afghanistan is impossible under the conditions that we want. We can walk away, but overnight the Taliban will take back over and exact retribution on all those who sided against them. It will be a blood bath.
There is only one way to get what we want and it is so unfathomable to Americans, and Westerners in general, that it will never happen.
We have to speak fluent Islamist honor culture.
We kill every last fucking one of them. Every area of Afghanistan under Taliban control must be gassed with so much long-acting nerve agent that nothing will live there for years to come. We must leave their air unbreathable, their water undrinkable, the ground unable to support life.
We must visit upon them immeasurable, merciless, cruelty that we prove we are biggest bad-asses on the block with the biggest dicks in the world and that nobody dare challenge us if they know what’s good for them.
We need to tell the Iranians the same thing. When they have a gunboat fire on one of our ships or they capture some of our sailors, we need to sink their entire navy. The whole thing. Then machine-gun their sailors that go into the water. Leave no one alive.
I have said for years that one of the problems with Israel is that it is a Western nation in a non-Western region.
They will never have peace with the Palestinians, so what they need is to be feared. When some Palestinian child goes to throw a rock at an Israeli’s car driving down the highway, an IDF solider needs to put a bullet through that kid.
The lesson is, you DO NOT throw rocks. At. Fucking. All.
The kids that throw rocks and get away with it grow up into adults that stab Israelis at bus stops or become suicide bombers in cafes. Don’t let the kids get away with throwing rocks or don’t let them grow up.
When we show self-restraint, we are not demonstrating our humanity, we are demonstrating our weakness, and weakness invites more attacks.
Our greatest enemy in a war against radical Islam isn’t them. It’s our own values. We are more afraid of hurting them the way they need to be hurt than we are of being hurt by them.
The only time in the entire recorded history of man that the area we know as Afghanistan was NOT a threat to the peace and stability of the international community was when it had been conquered by Alexander.
The British Empire came close… for a while.
Alexander did what you suggested. It worked.
The British did… for a while. It collapsed as soon as they stopped.
One other feature of honor cultures is that you only need to the the truth to your family or clan. Not only is it acceptable to lie to outsiders, it’s virtually required. A “Peace Treaty” with the Taliban (or any other Islamist group) isn’t worth the paper it is written on. When (not if) they violate the agreement how are you going to enforce it, take them to the “World Court”?
Hell, actual honesty isn’t all that important in honor societies even within a family/clan/household if the speaker has enough status. Consider the samurai of japan, where the sincerity of a witness in a trial was valued much more than evidence.
A more modern explanation of the honor culture comes from Francis Fukuyama in his book Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity, in which he discusses “high trust” and “low trust” societies. Well worth reading. A basic explanation is found at Wikipedia.
I understand now why God ordered the Israelistes to “utterly destroy” the Canaanites.
I have always been of the belief that if I have to resort to violence to defend myself or family that I will make sure that the person(s) my violence is directed at will not be able to do that again. In 7th grade i got in some big trouble when a kid slapped me, twice, and I proceeded to beat the crap out of him and break both his hand so he couldn’t slap me again. Glad it was back in the 70’s or I would probably me in jail still. I will avoid fights as long as I can, but dammit if I have to, one of us isn’t getting up.
As far as the Taliban, that has also been my thoughts, that we need to just kill every damn one we can find. Every one.Israel should just go in and remove everyone from that damned Gaza strip and kill them or shove them all into Syria or something. They have essentially declared war on Israel, so just take them over, f*ck the cries of ‘war crimes’. War isn’t a crime.
So, I understand and agree with everything you wrote, but here’s my question – stipulated that the US will not engage in the type of cleansing you’re suggesting and understanding that the Taliban, at their pre-9/11 worst, were not an actual existential threat to the US, is the continued cost of a low intensity conflict worth it to the US? The truth is that Afghanistan, the country, is worthless. While I feel for the non-Taliban people of Afghanistan, am I willing to see American blood and treasure continue to be spent to prop up a thoroughly corrupt government that can’t protect it’s people anyway? The alternative to that would seem to be a “peace treaty” that lets us leave with some semblance of “victory” and cut our losses. So, yes, the Taliban have no intention of living up to any treaty they may agree to, but is that better or worse for our country than the alternatives; genocide or a slow, bloody, never-ending conflict? I don’t know the answer, but would love to hear some opinions.
Sell it to China.
Invite China to occupy and oppress the country, which is one thing China is good at.
In exchange we will look the other way on every crime against humanity they commit and promise to buy the rare earths they extract from them.
Brilliant!
Trump recently said the right words. Does he have the will to back it up?
“We’re like policemen. We’re not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. “I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.”
I started reading about Afghanistan and the Taliban this month.
Basically the Taliban are Pashtun; and the Pashtun are Taliban. The Pashtun are the largest tribe in Afghanistan, but they are not the majority. The majority of Afghanistan is a motley collection of a dozen different tribes that hate each other and hate the Pashtun equally. Additionally, the NW Frontier of Pakistan (the ungovernable tribal regions bordering Afghanistan) are primarily Pashtun. So the government is majority Pashtun with a Pashtun President, and filled with Taliban spies and turncoats.
When the US Army Green Berets were riding horses and killing jihadis in Afghanistan in September and October 2001, they were allied with the Northern Alliance, which was a collection of non-Pashtun tribes that had not yet been fully conquered. The SF and the USAF broke the Taliban and their foreign jihadi storm troopers with B52’s full of JDAMS, and finally with the overwhelming firepower of ARC LIGHT strikes.
I think we made a mistake by 1) trying to nation build; 2) trying to bring the Pashtun into the government without; 3) demanding the Pashtun turnover Osama and all his foreign jihadis (or at least their heads and enough of their bodies to confirm their ID); and 4) not killing enough of them in 2001*.
*. Remember the prison uprising amongst the surrendered Taliban and Jihadis where Johnny Spann died? They should have been a bloody object lesson for all Afghanistan.
Can’t forget to mention the logistics support and rearming of the Northern Alliance troops too. We provided them with lots of ammo, and rebuild their tanks and other heavy arms. The USAF bombers destroyed much of the Foreign Jihadi front line positions. The NA went in and killed the jihadis. The smart and cowardly jihadis ran.
Maybe the answer is to nuke two or three, or a dozen mountains, and tell them we are leaving. If they ever piss us off, we will nuke the entire country and the NW Territory sanctuaries too.
Thirteen years ago—five years post-9/11—I wrote an essay where I posited a very similar thesis: “If there’s one lesson to be learned from what is happening today in the Middle East it’s this: Nothing—not negotiations, not talking, not the UN, not cease-fires—will achieve victory over the terrorists, save the sword. Hizbullah, Hamas, Lebanon, Syria, Iran all of them, understand a language that we in the West (save Israel) are, it seems, very reluctant to speak. The US does not seem to have the stomach anymore for what needs to be done to win a war; the spirit of Normandy, Bastogne, Midway, Iwo Jima and Hiroshima, has, sadly, been replaced with the spirit of Panmunjong, Dien Bien Phu and Tet.”
[https://theuniversalspectator.wordpress.com/2006/07/18/foresight/]
This article, damn near brought a tear to my eye! Phenomenal and spot on!
Everyone might as well gear up. If Trump wins, we have 4 more years to prepare. If not, this thing will “go hot” soon.
Just found this blog, and damn glad I did!
“Everyone might as well gear up. If Trump wins, we have 4 more years to prepare. If not, this thing will “go hot” soon.”
If nothing else, you deluded posers and cucking faggots are consistently predictable.