ANS -- On Afghanistan, Brad Hicks

This is very short.  A conversation on facebook from a post by Brad Hicks.  It's about why we shouldn't give that money to Afghanistan despite the starving Afghans.  Do you agree?

--Kim

Brad Hicks is feeling disgusted.

I'm a John Oliver fan in general, but he was full of shit this weekend. His main story was about the anniversary of the fall of Kabul. In the year since then, the Afghan economy has completely collapsed and people are selling their organs to the Iranians for food. Yes, that's objectively terrible.

John's solution is that we should give them the $7 billion that we were holding for the last government. That's money we told them they would get if they kept their promises. They started breaking those promises before we had even started evacuating Kabul and they break at least one new promise every week.

So yes, when they promise us that if they get that $7 billion back they will spend it on food, health care, and education, I don't find that promise terribly reassuring. Given their track record, I am 100% certain that every dollar they get their hands on will be spent on terrorist attacks and every ounce of food or medicine we send them will be black marketed across the border into Pakistan or Iraq for more money to spend on terrorist attacks.

Yes, it is terrible that people are starving and dying under the Taliban government. Exactly like we warned them they would. They should do something about that. Don't tell me they can't, they're one of the most heavily armed societies in the world, and there are ten million of them versus ten thousand Taliban.

But no, they want to be ruled by tribal warlords who are also religious fundamentalists AND they want everything to turn out fine. Pick one. Well, no, they did pick one. So I don't want to hear their complaints.

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• Brad Hicks

  And yes, when we turn half or more of our country over to tribal warlords who are also religious fundamentalists and it turns into exactly the same kind of starving, dying shitshow, I'm going to say the same thing about our own people.

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    Kim Cooper

    Brad Hicks I don't know about Afghanistan, but here in the US, there are a lot of us who do NOT want a theocracy of any kind here.

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• Nancy Lebovitz

  I'm thinking about this. You may well be right, though it may not be obvious that Afghanis can overthrow the Taliban and make things better. I remember an article about why the Taliban won, and a lot of it was the US permitting (encouraging?) "warlords" (unconstrained crime bosses?) and people wanted some sort of civil peace and the Taliban were the only people offering it outside the cities.

  Even so, the idea that helping people without taking thought for consequences is probably a bad standard even though fear of bad consequences can also prevent legitimate help.