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Afghanistan is a defeat only if we make it be one

Reader comment on item: Reflections on the Debacle in Afghanistan: Interview
in response to reader comment: Afghanistan was the unwinnable war

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Sep 16, 2021 at 01:59

Dear Dr Pipes, If you read the rhetoric in the Islamic media, many people out there are celebrating the "victory" of the Taliban in the 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan'. Of course, USA must have exited Afghanistan with a position of strength. But Mr Biden is an absentee President and he botched USA's exit..

But USA's leaving Afghanistan is not a defeat. No intelligent person or country should fight for or against an enemy for whom the wars never end. Peace, education, freedom and prosperity is irrelevant for Muslims and that is why they can look at their countries in 'dysfunctional ruins' (as the reader Kepha said above) and still say that they won the war. I guess destruction comes with Islamic Emirates as an included option! And, people of Afghanistan easily forget that ever since they left their Hindu/Buddist roots, they have never lived in peace. They have only lived in poverty, war and declination.

Coming back to the USA, our leaving Afghanistan is a defeat only if we let it become so. The war against Islam is never a war of arms. It is a war that needs to be fought intellectually using pens, thoughts, and minds. Muslims and Afghans should not be allowed to come on the TV of the free countries and go back after narrating their tearful stories until they also own responsibility of Islam's failures. They need to be asked if they have read Q5-33 lately. Those of us have growth, democracy, freedom, and joy in their societies do not get it for free. We pay a huge price for it. It could be so convenient for the USA to declare itself a Christian nation two centuries ago. It would have been equally convenient for India to somehow mandate itself to be 99% Hindu (just as Islamic Emirates are 99% Muslim. But non-Muslim societies choose the inconvenience of living with minorities so we can get freedom, prosperity, and joy in return. Islam never afforded this inconvenience. Let the truth be told, Islam divided perfectly good humans and made them dhimmies and non-dhimmies (I am not cooking it up. It is written in the Islamic doctrine). That is the cost that Islam will always have to pay until it mends its ways.

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Reader comments (39) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
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