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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20900 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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There is no way you can tell me that you can't reshape a society of just 40 million people when you're there for 20 years, you spend $2.3 trillion, and you have overwhelming military force. Societies have been forcefully reshaped in the past and they will be in the future. Take Germany or Japan for example.

Yes you can. There is a pretty big difference between forcing a country to change it's foreign policy (and in Germany's case roll back internal politics by 15 years) and changing pretty fundamental parts of 1400+ of years of culture.

Could America have changed Afghan culture in 20 years anyway? Sure, but that would probably have required heavy-handedness to the point of genocide, which i doubt Pakistan would have agreed to act as a staging ground for.

Consider how long it took for islam to really take hold in the middle east.

Could America have changed Afghan culture in 20 years anyway? Sure, but that would probably have required heavy-handedness to the point of genocide, which i doubt Pakistan would have agreed to act as a staging ground for.

At the very least, it would have required taking over the education system by both controlling the curriculum and forcing children to attend it, to which your point still applies.

As a 'rule', you can force significant culture change in as little as a generation, but that also doesn't mean that you make the changes you intended to / wanted.

(A campaign of forced schooling under western tutelage would have likely both significantly negatively impacted the rural farmers who depended on their children for labor, causing major economic issues, and would have led to the Taliban/insurgents deliberately targetting schools for mass casualty attacks, with all the cultural impacts that normalized / endured school bombings might have.)

(A campaign of forced schooling under western tutelage would have likely both significantly negatively impacted the rural farmers who depended on their children for labor, causing major economic issues, and would have led to the Taliban/insurgents deliberately targetting schools for mass casualty attacks, with all the cultural impacts that normalized / endured school bombings might have.)

There's ways to do that on the cheap and ensure safety. Literally pay families to send young boys to military boarding schools as the first step.

Might work but that’s how you get the residential schools everyone complains about. Especially once you factor in the discipline problems from children who don’t want to be there and adults who think they need to kill the Afghan and save the man.

Keep in mind I'm not talking about reshaping the entire Afghan society this way, I'm talking about teaching enough young boys to fight for their country when they become men. You don't need to enroll all children there, and you don't need to make it mandatory. Just pay the parents enough that they line up to send the children there themselves, and just expel any kids too undisciplined to work with. The rest will come under pressure from their families to be on their best behavior.

This is child slavery with extra steps.

Not any more than any other boarding school. I'm not sure if it's even different from mandatory public schooling in general.

There is a pretty big difference between forcing a country to change it's foreign policy and (and in Germany's case roll back internal politics by 15 years) and changing pretty fundamental parts of 1400+ of years of culture.

I'm not sure that Japan only got rolled back 15 years.

Could America have changed Afghan culture in 20 years anyway? Sure, but that would probably have required heavy-handedness to the point of genocide.

Why would inculcating some semblance of patriotism, such that the Afghan army doesn't immediately collapse, require genocide?

I'm not sure that Japan only got rolled back 15 years.

It's been discussed before, but Japan had been modernising rapidly since the Meiji era. They wanted what the Americans had. Not all of it, but enough of it, and the Americans were careful to leave enough of Japanese culture intact that they could spin it as reform with American aid rather than straightforward subjugation.

Why would inculcating some semblance of patriotism, such that the Afghan army doesn't immediately collapse, require genocide?

At a guess, because the area called 'Afghanistan' is made up of different tribal groups who hate each other, and are only prevented from doing anything about it by tyrants with sufficient ruthlessness and firepower. Making Afghans pretend to be a country requires you to act like a Taliban warlord; making them actually patriotic would require ethnic cleansing of all the groups except the ones you've decided to support.

Making Afghans pretend to be a country requires you to act like a Taliban warlord; making them actually patriotic would require ethnic cleansing of all the groups except the ones you've decided to support.

I doubt it. Americans had control over the education system for 20 years, that's a whole generation, and we're not talking about implanting some galaxy-brained fourth-wave feminism, just basic nationalism that most other countries managed to move on to by similar means. Not to mention that you don't even need to do this to the entire country, you just need enough young men to hold the line against a bunch of angry goat herders.

If there was evidence that the US actually gave that an honest try, I might consider tribalism running in Afghan blood, but as it stands it looks like pure cope.

Afghan nationalism wasn’t a desirable solution because the available rallying points were… Sunni Islam and Persian ness. I suppose if you want to get really cynical there’s also drug dealing.

Afghan nationalism wasn’t a desirable solution because the available rallying points were… Sunni Islam and Persian ness.

When you operate on a scale of 20 years, you can scoop up kids when they're young and come up with any rallying point you want.

Americans had control over the education system for 20 years

What's even "the education system" in a notoriously poor and fractured country? It's not like everyone was going to some full K12 thing paid for by the US.

The US could totally win over everyone in a large circle around Kabul and still end up losing the war.

What's even "the education system" in a notoriously poor and fractured country?

When you've pushed 2 trillion dollars into it? It's whatever you want it to be.

"Money = outcomes" isn't even true in the American educational system. Not sure why it would be true in Afghanistan.

I think that fits better with my argument than yours. The reason money doesn't translate into results in America is because the elites are following terrible ideas. The reason why it didn't translate into result in Afghanistan is because the American elites in charge of it were following terrible ideas.

I thought you brought up Afghanistan's poverty to point out some material limit to what they could to, my point was that with the amount of resources that the US actually pulled there, there were no such material limits.

Nations may just buy into absurd ideas. But a lot of the time the reasons bad ideas keep being implemented has to do with some underlying political reality that's much harder to change than one's mind.

This is clearly true in the US. I would expect it to be worse in Afghanistan because it's a much worse country with a never-ending insurgency (fighting this was what had the unlimited budget, not educating Afghans).

The US may be able to power through bad ideas caused by granting too much power to self-interested group like teacher's unions. Enforcing nationalism via the awful Afghan education system has bigger obstacles and building a fully modern one across the entire country (when part of the problem was control and legitimacy throughout the entire country) has bigger ones.

you just need enough young men to hold the line against a bunch of angry goat herders

Don't forget that the 'angry goat herders' i.e. the Taliban are the last group of young men that the US armed, organised and trained (to fight Russia).

I'll grant that it's possible to get, say, all the French or all the Germans to act like one country most of the time, but it's very difficult, especially when you have genocidal religious hatred and no history of deference to a state. Bismark managed it eventually, but it took a while and the Germans mostly got on all right already, and same with the French. The Brits and Americans managed it, but only at the cost of a very destructive civil war in each country, and both countries were at least somewhat used to accepting the existence of a central authority (I know the Confederacy were trying to leave, but they still accepted Federal government as real and relevant).

If there was evidence that the US actually gave that an honest try, I might consider tribalism running in Afghan blood, but as it stands it looks like pure cope.

Split the difference? I think the US strategy was bonkers from the start, but I also think it would be very difficult to do even if you tried properly.

Don't forget that the 'angry goat herders' i.e. the Taliban are the last group of young men that the US armed, organised and trained (to fight Russia).

So? As you say they were armed to fight the Soviets, and they were trained to fight as well - not trained to hold a western belief system.

Bismark managed it eventually, but it took a while and the Germans mostly got on all right already, and same with the French

Sure, but I'll repeat, it was 20 years, and with the amount of money that was spent, they could literally start buying young boys to propagandize them 24/7 in boarding schools.

Split the difference? I think the US strategy was bonkers from the start, but I also think it would be very difficult to do even if you tried properly.

Sure, that seems fair.

Re: angry goat herders, what I mean is that they’re not pushovers. They’re American-trained and equipped, either directly or once removed. It’s not a matter of just propagandising a few boys to stand around looking tough, you need serious fighters.

The afghan army did not need more patriotism. They needed less. They were american stooges. They could promise their people a good life by submitting to the international liberal order like germany and japan. Of course on the patriotism scale the taliban would always have them beat.

Build compounds with little America inside for soldiers and their families to live in- globally people seem to like suburban lifestyles, you can make this appealing.

But you’ve also created a closed caste of cleruchs to oppress the people in your name, which the US didn’t want to do.

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