Afghan Governance

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2012/0731/Afghan-governance-more-Judge-Dredd-than-Jefferson?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+feeds%2Fcsm+%28Christian+Science+Monitor+|+All+Stories%29

Uh, welcome to how they end up organizing themselves, regardless of what foreign intervention tells them to do?

From the get go, we probably shouldn't have allied with the Northern Alliance to get rid of the Taliban, and should have realized that in the history of Afghanistan, the state out of Kabul frequently becomes just another actor competing against the local and regional leaders of the country.

That's not to say that Afghans don't actually have a sense of nationality and unity in spite of their ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious differences.

It's a very old world over there that has a long history of being together, in one form or another.

It's just that the centralized state that we're accustomed to in the West isn't necessarily going to be the model that will, actually, work for the Afghans, and may, actually, prove to be counter productive to their overall well being.

Personally, after taking a class on Afghanistan with the esteemed Dr. Vikash Yadav (who's blog on Afghanistan is used by the US military for training purposes), I would say that the closet approximation that we could get for successful Afghan governance would be a decentralized confederation, rather than a centralized federation out of Kabul.

In the end, I think that the Afghans should have been given a lot more leeway in deciding how they are to be organized and governed, in spite of what we'd call "democracy," simply because, in the end, that option would have been the most democratic thing they could have done.

The world will not chose to organize itself according to Western standards, anymore than the West will not chose to organize itself according to others' standards.

Each system has its benefits and it's costs.

And those should be respected, such that people can govern themselves in the ways that would make the most sense for them, and lead them to the happiest lifestyles that are possible, regardless of what others may think.

If there is a conflict in what we would call universal human rights.

I think that that situation would be best handled internally by the offending society in question. 

Even on such hot button issues such as gender and minority rights.

We don't even do those well here, in the United States.

Why should we tell others how to do it in their own country?

Especially when the long arc of history really does bend towards something like justice, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Sometimes, you've got to let the world work out its own problems.

And you can't always expect it to go well for your own sake when you chose to meddle.

Look at me.

I'd love to help with this kind of stuff.

But I can't.

And that's just something that I gotta deal with for now, if at all.

Think about it.

Cause you're more likely to screw yourself over when you don't.

Think about it.