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Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher
Thats not really my argument.
My argument is that, if we went in for American revenge as you acknowledge, this PR business of being about women's rights, democracy, etc is a load of BS and a justification.
If we really care about those things, our actions in the world would be different, and we would care about more places and we would raise the profile of places we couldn't get to in order to encourage other rich countries to do so. You would see our politicians make more of a big deal about it, on our own soil and at international conferences, in the UN, etc.
That we don't do this, suggests we don't really care about women's rights and democracy enough to invade other countries and enforce it. Which makes our commitment in Afghanistan questionable.
You don't see why some people would have a problem with a war that was started to help the Americans get some revenge and then was post-justified in some other way? It is costing people money and costing people lives. If the justification wasn't legitimate initially then making it about something else seems fishy to me.
If Canada has the export of women's rights and democracy as one of its highest values I think we'd act in a different way in general. So the stated goals of the war do not seem to jive with our other actions.
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Okay, thanks for this post. We seem to understand one another better now.
I... don't know what to think to be honest. We went in on what was an essentially a "Eff up the Taliban because they effed us up, sorta" mission and have basically ended up in a slow endemic conflict with no end in sight.
Progress has been made though. The country has a rising literacy rate, more women in schools and government, and the possible opening of new markets for its sudden mineral wealth.
Why are we there? Tough question. What is interesting to me is why we stayed. We could have just blown some Taliban apart and then effed off out of there, but we didn't.
There is some sort of moral imperative for democracies when they go to war, even if it starts out as vengeance. By the way, Machiavelli said that republics were the most dangerous enemy to fight for just this reason.
I think that democracies can give citizens virtue. That is, courage, prudence and a greater respect for their fellow man. It is no coincidence that after the invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban government that we decided to stay and yes, help Afghans rebuild their shattered country.
This is not an easy task, but to me, it is a noble task. It requires all the virtue of our citizenry to accomplish it. From a military perspective, we need troops to secure regions and kill our enemies. To me, these soldiers and their commanders should be supported with almost no question. The only reason that would cause me to look on the conflict with a jaundiced eye is if strategically we were engaging in intent destruction of civilians in Afghanistan.
All evidence points to the opposite.