This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I expect to hear how the choices you list weren't made when the war was sold to the public and initiated, and how they might have been made differently either at the point of initiation or at any subsequent point over the next twenty years.
You might reply "well, this guy pushes different keys at his keyboard and a different document comes out, which..." But cause and effect means that all the people plausibly in a position to be pushing the keys are going to push roughly the same keys!
...It seems to me that you are using the word "failure" to refer to the chaotic disaster of a pullout. I am using the word "failure" in reference to the stated goals of the invasion and occupation, the goals that were used to sell it to the American public, not least among them the soldiers who volunteered to serve there. I don't care about the events of the pullout at all, and do not consider it a failure, because unlike the entire rest of the war, it did what it was supposed to do: by the end of it, we were out. Sure it was a complete disaster from a tactical perspective, and sure the people who made it happen like that should probably be fired and jailed for criminal incompetence, though it seems to me that we might disagree over who those people actually were. Confining ourselves to the pullout specifically, maybe different people might have delivered different results! But the objective was in fact achieved, something that cannot be said for any other part of that two-decade disaster.
In any case, leaving the pullout aside, the specific policy decisions you note were the product of institutional culture. Given the institutional culture, not only was failure inevitable, but I am convinced that the specific form of failure that we got was inevitable. I don't think presidential or congressional elections flipping would have changed it. I don't see any plausible staffing decisions flipping that would have changed it either. The initial decisions were the sort of bad that our institutions reliably produce, and once locked in, those institutions are far too sclerotic to make significant course corrections even if someone in control had wanted to, which no one did.
In short, it seems to me that we committed ourselves to impractical objectives, and then spent twenty years pretending otherwise at great expense in terms of treasure and human misery.
Who would have seen that as a plausible benefit to an Afghanistan surge, rather than further confirmation that a pullout was the correct choice? And for what? How would such a surge have moved us closer to "victory" in any meaningful sense, as opposed to simply further delaying the admission of a failure present more or less from the start?
Sure, "things could happen differently". I could bet on black a hundred times in a row at roulette and end up a gajillionaire. But that's not actually going to happen, firstly because the laws of probability don't work that way, and secondly because I don't gamble. In the same way, it seems to me that the actions and outcomes we observe were overwhelmingly probable both because of the actions taken, and because the people taking action are inclined to these actions by training and temperment.
More options
Context Copy link