[deepsun]

"Provide a way" -- what if it's way too expensive, even for a huge country? And populace just doesn't want it (e. g. it goes against sacred texts). And there are no infrastructure nor institutions to build upon. It's close to impossible. And the populace would see us only as a provider of goods.

And morally, why should we provide some other country? Are we the world government? Shouldn't we stop messing with others and keep to our business, as long as they don't mess with us (bomb and export heroin). Why are we suddenly responsible for them?

PS: nevertheless, one country (USA) tried to build democracy in Afghanistan, but failed. And only got scoldings for that.

[toast0]

> And morally, why should we provide some other country?

Enlightened self interest. If we want less heroin in our country, it's in our interest to provide something better for people in other countries to do than grow than heroin poppies. There's a lot of stuff to grow, I'm pretty sure something can be found that doesn't violate the sacred texts.

Otoh, Synthentic opiods may be cheaper and easier than harvesting heroin poppy, so maybe the specific problem of heroin export is solved, but not in the intended way.

[beepbooptheory]

Seeing a pure blood neo-con like this out in the wild is weird. It's like watching Mad Men but it's set in 2003.

[mschuster91]

> "Provide a way" -- what if it's way too expensive, even for a huge country?

Afghanistan has a lot of natural resources.

> And morally, why should we provide some other country? Are we the world government? Shouldn't we stop messing with others and keep to our business, as long as they don't mess with us (bomb and export heroin). Why are we suddenly responsible for them?

Development aid is always a good thing. Soft power is incredibly powerful on the global stage - just look at UN votes. A lot of countries that firmly voted with the Western nations for decades now votes with Russia/China or abstains, corresponding with us scaling back foreign aid and other similar investments. And there's an economic side as well... China used to be a bunch of piss poor farmers, now they're among the world's strongest economies.

And well, either we are the ones who decide where the world is going, we are the top dogs - or we have to submit to China, Russia and the likes, and there is no way this is a good way forward.

> PS: nevertheless, one country (USA) tried to build democracy in Afghanistan, but failed. And only got scoldings for that.

That's because we (I'm German, we were in this mess as well) didn't actually do nation building. Yes, we got rid of the Taliban and we built schools for girls, but that's it. The "army" was to at least 50% only existing on paper, corruption and sexual abuse (bacha bazi, DO NOT google that one if you're not ready for vivid descriptions of child abuse) ran rampant across all of society.

We completely and utterly failed in auditing and oversight. And not just of the Afghani side, but our own as well, see Bagram.

[deepsun]

> didn't actually do nation building

USA did, at least tried, but it's just not feasible. Sarah Paine described it way better than I can do: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6d_mQwwiPjM