Our fool's errand in Afghanistan

Submitted by Jeff (United States), May 17, 2019 at 11:08

Hi Debanjan,

Always a pleasure to hear from a man who chooses to live in the world's largest democracy.

Strange, you forgot to include India in your list of countries Muslims should colonize (i.e., conquer).

Thanks for your honesty, though. Funny how imperialism and colonialism always seem to be uppermost in the minds of Muslims. Funny too how, of all Western knowledge and inventions, only the military ones seem to be of much interest to the Muslim world. Polio vaccines? Not so much.

I've never heard a single Buddhist say the flag of Buddhism needs to fly over the white house. Why is that? How many Buddhist priests tell their people that the polio vaccine is anti-Buddhist? How many MiG-21's has the Dalai Lama purchased for the army of Buddha?

We foolishly stayed in Afghanistan to build schools, hospitals and infrastructure and to try to help create a decent government, one that did not feature shooting women in the head in crowded stadiums or destroying ancient cultural treasures. Our failure (Afghans blow up schools as fast as we can build them) says much more about them than us.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".