Afghanistan Falls

[Cindy Claveau]

Also, calling them "primitive tribal societies" reeks of Western condescension. We may not like their culture, but it's far from "primitive". And given the terrain in which they live, tribal structure is probably the only feasible form of governance.

I agree about tribal structure being more feasible for them, but I strongly disagree about them being anything other than an extremist, anti-technology, anti-women, anti-democratic gang of thugs who oppose ANY idea that disagrees with their religious nuttery. Their base are rural tribes with limited access to technology - that part makes them primitive, right along with their rejection of modern democratic liberalism (not so much a political stance as it is culturally embedded.)

Here's the part I do NOT "like'. It's not condescension. It's opposition to barbarism, including our own.

Taliban publicly execute woman

 

[Cindy Claveau]

 

[Beebo Brink]

I strongly disagree about them being anything other than an extremist, anti-technology, anti-women, anti-democratic gang of thugs who oppose ANY idea that disagrees with their religious nuttery.

They are all those things, but that does not equate with "primitive". That's an outdated anthropological term rooted in Western hubris that is actually part of the problem. We divided the world into "primitive" societies and "advanced" societies and that hierarchy was and is still used to justify our imperialistic wars.

It is the very definition of condescension to label any group, no matter how barbaric their actions, as "primitive" because it implies that "advanced" societies have somehow outgrown this barbarism, when we have ample evidence that we are also capable of barbarism.

Societies can be defined by descriptive words such as "pre-literate" or "tribal" and convey some meaning. But "primitive" is a pejorative, useless term.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Just imagine... If only we spent our time in Afghanistan arming and training the woman... Instead of their men.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

They are all those things, but that does not equate with "primitive". That's an outdated anthropological term rooted in Western hubris that is actually part of the problem. We divided the world into "primitive" societies and "advanced" societies and that hierarchy was and is still used to justify our imperialistic wars.

You're mischaracterising my use of the term. I think. Going on the World Bank reports on that country, they have an extremely shaky economy (mostly agrarian) with very little in terms of modern manufacturing capacity. It's not a moral judgment, it's simple economics.

It is the very definition of condescension to label any group, no matter how barbaric their actions, as "primitive"

Even when they actually are living in the Dark Ages? Executing people for offenses against the religion of the State? Refusing to educate women?

because it implies that "advanced" societies have somehow outgrown this barbarism, when we have ample evidence that we are also capable of barbarism.

I've pretty much said that we are capable. But I think you're misconstruing the intent -- it's not an insult. It's an honest appraisal of the state of their society, born out by their policies and actions.

Societies can be defined by descriptive words such as "pre-literate" or "tribal" and convey some meaning. But "primitive" is a pejorative, useless term.

Ok. So, semantics. Got ya.

I'm going to extend my argument to America. We have our own radical islamist-type segment here in the US. The advantage we have is that they can create a lot of trouble (1/6) but in reality don't have enough power to truly overturn the government. But not for a moment do I believe that, given total control over the US, these radicals wouldn't also be imprisoning and executing those in opposition. Statistics show that most of those who adhere to radical Christianity come from under-served communities with lower educational standards (and outcomes). We do have our own "primitive" groups, and yes I do mean that as an insult to those who would throw over the Constitution in order to accelerate some mythical rapture.

You could say I'm an equal opportunity cultural critic.

 

[Spirits Rising]

Oh for fuck sake .... Enough with this "Western" and "Eastern" bullshit. At the end of the day, you're dealing with the repercussions of having large groups of greedy fucking Humans pulling their usual shit - that is all. The culture is fucking irrelevant and simply represents a different methodology for the "use" of The Other.

If anyone spouting that shit is looking for any sort of unity or better future ... You're gonna need to drop that bullshit.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Even when they actually are living in the Dark Ages? Executing people for offenses against the religion of the State? Refusing to education women?

I've pretty much said that we are capable. But I think you're misconstruing the intent -- it's not an insult.

And I'm telling you, it IS an insult. "Primitive" culture was a very specific and highly racist term used by anthropologists for decades. It was part of a belief system that societies evolved from simple, primitive cultures to more advanced cultures, and of course we were more advanced. It's not just a matter of semantics, any more than calling someone "retard" is purely semantics.

A culture that holds values you don't like, that you find barbaric, that offends your sensibilities still does not equate with "primitive." Pre-literate and pre-technological societies are just as complex (if not more so) than our own. You can dislike their values and their beliefs and recoil at their practices, but that does not equate with calling them "primitive."

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Oh for fuck sake .... Enough with this "Western" and "Eastern" bullshit. At the end of the day, you're dealing with the repercussions of having large groups of greedy fucking Humans pulling their usual shit - that is all. The culture is fucking irrelevant and simply represents a different methodology for the "use" of The Other.

The culture is hardly irrelevant. In history, culture is almost everything. Most every modern war begins over cultural differences and the practical implications of that. Japan had a militaristic culture, as did Germany. The US South had a slavery-based culture. Communism as an economic system only threatens our oligarchy, not our democracy - as a totalitarian system, it has historically presented itself as being just as barbaric as any system based on Fascism.

I don't see this as "west vs east". I think it should be framed more as a fight between extremist barbarism and pluralistic societies.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I agree about tribal structure being more feasible for them, but I strongly disagree about them being anything other than an extremist, anti-technology, anti-women, anti-democratic gang of thugs who oppose ANY idea that disagrees with their religious nuttery. Their base are rural tribes with limited access to technology - that part makes them primitive, right along with their rejection of modern democratic liberalism (not so much a political stance as it is culturally embedded.)

Here's the part I do NOT "like'. It's not condescension. It's opposition to barbarism, including our own.

Taliban publicly execute woman

How would you distinguish the motivation of one of these members of "rural tribes with limited access to technology" (a description I am not sure is wholly accurate) from that of European and US Muslims who went to Syria to join Daesh as a result of their slick online recruitment campaigns?

It's more, I think, a case of how people want to live -- lots of people in Afghanistan, particularly up in the hills, live in small rural settlements, where people farm and hunt, and raise sheep and livestock, and feud and smuggle and grow opium, just as they always have done.

Clan loyalties in that part of the world run very deep, since they're really family and community loyalties, since clans there, as far as I can make out, are primarily a method to making sure family land-holdings don't get broken up, while at the same time preventing intermarriage between blood relatives, since there really isn't a great deal of government outside of the cities -- it's up to you and your cousins, and everyone's inlaws, to look after each other.

People who don't like that kind of life leave for the cities, or to work or study abroad, just they do in the US, though generally maintaining close contact with the folks back home. People who do like it stay there.

It's not, I think, that people there particularly like the Taliban (though their social conservatism is probably shared by many of the village and tribal elders) but more that the Taliban are the only group capable of forming a government at the moment, and the provincial governors, and the tribal and village elders, would rather go along with them for the time being than risk an all-out civil war.

 

[Spirits Rising]

The culture is hardly irrelevant. In history, culture is almost everything. Most every modern war begins over cultural differences and the practical implications of that. Japan had a militaristic culture, as did Germany. The US South had a slavery-based culture. Communism as an economic system only threatens our oligarchy, not our democracy - as a totalitarian system, it has historically presented itself as being just as barbaric as any system based on Fascism.

I don't see this as "west vs east". I think it should be framed more as a fight between extremist barbarism and pluralistic societies.

That's nice. It also completely missed the point of my post.

Am I splitting hairs? Probably - don't fucking care. Greedy Humans are going to be greedy little fucks. We need to move on from that shit - and no, the treatment of Women, Minorities and such is not a fucking cultural issue.

I am also going to refrain from further commentary/reading in this thread ... I am seeing red over some of this absolute bullshit.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

And I'm telling you, it IS an insult. "Primitive" culture was a very specific and highly racist term used by anthropologists for decades. It was part of a belief system that societies evolved from simple, primitive cultures to more advanced cultures, and of course we were more advanced. It's not just a matter of semantics, any more than calling someone "retard" is purely semantics.

This is where we are differing. You're resorting to the more-liberal academic definitions of primitive. I'm simply going on their economy and prevailing ideas. I see absolutely nothing in the Afghan model that deserves respect.

A culture that holds values you don't like, that you find barbaric, that offends your sensibilities still does not equate with "primitive." [./quote]

A culture that bases their national laws on a religion, resorts to executing women for the smallest of infractions, is so overrun with corruption that basic services hardly function and even forbids music checks ALL the boxes for "primitive".

Pre-literate and pre-technological societies are just as complex (if not more so) than our own.

"Complexity" does not make a society more advanced. Again, I feel you're arguing semantics.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

How would you distinguish the motivation of one of these members of "rural tribes with limited access to technology" (a description I am not sure is wholly accurate) from that of European and US Muslims who went to Syria to join Daesh as a result of their slick online recruitment campaigns?

Non sequitur. Those Muslims who went to Syria were already immersed in Islamic extremism. We're calling them "radicalized".

It's more, I think, a case of how people want to live -- lots of people in Afghanistan, particularly up in the hills, live in small rural settlements, where people farm and hunt, and raise sheep and livestock, and feud and smuggle and grow opium, just as they always have done.

That's the part I think we never grasped fully before Reagan and Bush pushed that invasion. But, I'll also submit that if any of those rural people take up arms or plant bombs to kill non-believers, there is absolutely ZERO to admire about their society. And, to be frank, it's their religion that's a huge restraint on their progress.

I just happen to think that women should be educated, and any society that refuses to do so is cutting themselves off from a major national asset, not to mention what should be "moral" for virtually the entire rest of the planet.

 

[Romana]

Oh for fuck sake .... Enough with this "Western" and "Eastern" bullshit. At the end of the day, you're dealing with the repercussions of having large groups of greedy fucking Humans pulling their usual shit - that is all. The culture is fucking irrelevant and simply represents a different methodology for the "use" of The Other.

If anyone spouting that shit is looking for any sort of unity or better future ... You're gonna need to drop that bullshit.

The culture is relevant in that one culture can't impose its values on another.
Other than that, IDK.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Am I splitting hairs? Probably - don't fucking care. Greedy Humans are going to be greedy little fucks. We need to move on from that shit - and no, the treatment of Women, Minorities and such is not a fucking cultural issue.

It absolutely is, regardless of how many fucking cuss words you can type.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

It's not, I think, that people there particularly like the Taliban (though their social conservatism is probably shared by many of the village and tribal elders) but more that the Taliban are the only group capable of forming a government at the moment, and the provincial governors, and the tribal and village elders, would rather go along with them for the time being than risk an all-out civil war.

Well, yeh, there we have it. The Taliban took over because nobody's left to stop them. And honestly, I'm glad we're not the ones doing the fighting for a change.

Maybe we can use some of that war money to actually get some national health insurance here.

 

[Beebo Brink]

This is where we are differing. You're resorting to the more-liberal academic definitions of primitive. I'm simply going on their economy and prevailing ideas. I see absolutely nothing in the Afghan model that deserves respect.

At no time am I asking you to respect it or like it or give it a free pass for anything. This is not about some kumbah-ya social tolerance nonsense. It's just that "primitive" is a term that you are in fact using in a pejorative sense by applying it to a group of people you don't happen to like (neither do I).

I wouldn't give a damn about you insulting the Taliban or even the Afghans, but the word primitive is used to describe many indigenous native populations that in no way reflect the barbarism that you are equating with that word. Stop perpetuating the myth that any current society is "primitive."

At best, the term might apply to some paleolithic humans, but even there I'm doubtful they were as uncomplicated as we like to think.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

The way I put it teaching about Vietnam, which applies here and in a number of other wars, is that the United States was seeking a military solution to a political problem. Like the Viet Cong, the main goal of the Taliban is independence. Their vison of independence includes imposing a regressive religious regime but that's secondary. They wanted us out, like the Russians and the British before us.

The goal of the occupied country is clear, and in cases like this the repressive group that is effective at harassing the occupying power is likely to at least temporarily gain popular support. In Vietnam, that support has softened and the country has had a reform movement in the intervening years (especially as China has threatened their interests and the US has confronted China: another failing of American intervention has been to treat global Communism as a unified evil force, instead of asking what Russian and Chinese national interest was independent of the ideology of the current rulers). In both these wars, the US goal was not clear. Containing Communist expansion and defeating Islamic extremism are abstract, and as I said above, political goals.

In these cases, the resistance only has to wear down the occupier. We could never achieve, let alone articulate, our goals. Theirs was always clear, and all they needed was for us to leave. Anything we could do to weaken the opposition significantly only had the effect of increasing sympathy for them and growing their ranks, something we did much worse in Vietnam.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

At no time am I asking you to respect it or like it or give it a free pass for anything. This is not about some kumbah-ya social tolerance nonsense. It's just that "primitive" is a term that you are in fact using in a pejorative sense by applying it to a group of people you don't happen to like (neither do I).

I wouldn't give a damn about you insulting the Taliban or even the Afghans, but the word primitive is used to describe many indigenous native populations that in no way reflect the barbarism that you are equating with that word. Stop perpetuating the myth that any current society is "primitive."

At best, the term might apply to some paleolithic humans, but even there I'm doubtful they were as uncomplicated as we like to think.

My usage of the term was not a reference to the moral quality of the Afghan people. I'm talking about how they live in an agrarian society (virtually no original technology) and adhere to PRIMITIVE notions of religious law, which includes capital punishment for minor offenses. Or to the idea that women should be captive housewives without an education. Even the idea that music "corrupts" rather than inspires and elevates.

I'll admit that I have been away from academia for a couple of decades, but from out here it just sounds like a nit-picking argument. Maybe a better term would be "regressive"

I said I was an equal opportunity cultural critic, and this is a great example - I have no confidence that a American "Bible Based Government" (as our own extremists want) would not be just as horrific and barbaric as that in Afghanistan. Upon reflection, I think my main complaint is the role religion has played in both countries.

Primitive religion. The Taliban is not much different than the Death Cult we see among Trumpists here, except Trumpists lost power.

 

[Abigail Longmeadow]

The US needs to recognize limits to its power and ability. We can't just go into a completely alien society, and immediately change them into a western liberal democracy. It took western Europe about 1000 years to develop modern democracy from feudal monarchy. This is a social development process that proceeds by stages, with the first stage being the development of merchant dominated cities, to challenge the feudal agrarian powers, and then the development of a unified commercial state.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

I'm probably just guessing here, but if I was forced to live in the mountains without internet, running water or electricity, I would label my circumstances as decidedly "primitive" no matter what academicians say.

If I was born and raised in that environment, I wouldn't know what "modern" meant.