• VubDapple@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    3 months ago

    We don’t need to respect their customs. We need to respect their people, including their people’s need for emotional healthy relationships which are often in conflict with elements in their cultures that only feel entitled to dominate.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      3 months ago

      We don’t need to respect their customs.

      We do if we want to move military personal through their territory without resistance.

      Back when Americans were occupying Afghanistan, we had a seemingly unlimited tolerance for sexual abuse of minors and narco trafficking in the state. We needed the warlords to secure territory and the drug lords to underpin the local economy, in order to contain reactionary religious ideology.

      Only after we left did we rediscover our duty to Afghan civilians.

      people’s need for emotional healthy relationships which are often in conflict with elements in their cultures that only feel entitled to dominate

      I don’t know how else you describe detonating the world’s largest fuel bomb over Nangarhar Province, if you’re not describing it as “entitlement to dominate”.

      We weren’t in Afghanistan handing out hugs and flowers. We were killing dissidents en mass in order to suppress revolt.

      • VubDapple@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        3 months ago

        You’re describing the political reality and I get that, it’s expedient. But that doesn’t mean it is also moral.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          3 months ago

          No, not at all. But then neither is looting the Afghani Treasury and sanctioning the country into a state of national famine.