Afghanistan exit strategy

The 9/11 attacks were an outlier, to measure the level of extremism by reference to their being replicated or not is unhelpful in the, ahem, extreme.

Tell the people of the Middle East that extremism has reduced and I'm sure they'll disagree given the sheer scale of grassroots support for ISIS

Again, I've gone to some lengths to make explicit that I'm not trying here to debate whether US foreign policy is imperialistic, but rather how a long history of sufferance under and resistance to various empires has shaped the outlook of Afghan culture. I'm not sure really how to make that distinction any clearer but my point stands that throughout history you'd struggle to point to more than a handful of examples of an invaded people becoming collectively more moderate as a result of their subjugation. On the contrary what we call extremism correlates to a remarkably consistent pattern of behaviours observed in response to foreign invaders throughout human history.

Cultural signifiers which had only the most cursory significance in peacetime gain a symbolic power in the face of the perceived threat of being subsumed by a more powerful rival.

Where those signifiers are tied to national identity we call the phenomenon nationalism. Where they are tied to religion we rebrand it religious extremism but the processes are much the same.

The occupied or subjugated population will tend to defend their cultural identity by increasing not only the significance attached to it but the level of force employed to promote and enforce the associated norms.

If you doubt that just ask the women who endured living under ISIS how they were treated, or discuss the importance of religious tolerance with an IRA supporter.

For that matter look no further than the behaviours amongst white nationalists throughout Europe and the US in response to their perceived white genocide.

Whether we view the US as imperialistic is not the point, what matters is how the Afghan populace see them and how the resolve of the significant portion who support the Taliban has only been bolstered by the last two decades. That's why we're in this position now with the resurgent Taliban, ISIS having ravaged huge swathes of the region and mass movement of refugee populations fleeing persecution and virtually indiscriminate wholesale violence.

When they invaded Afghanistan the US opened that can of worms by playing right into the narrative of an imperialist West yet again crusading across the region. It was never going to play out any other way.

Hey, have our members of the military industrial complex solved Afghanistan yet? Lanz? Anc? Throw more bombs at them, right?