Western Hubris In Afghanistan

[gl556tr]

Polly Toynbee's appraisal "The Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan has laid bare the magnitude of western hubris" is most enlightening and, sadly, true.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/17/talibans-victory-afghanistan-laid-bare-western-hubris

[roadman]

What does hubris mean

[douglas9401]

Pride.

[wolf63]

usually 'excess pride'

[Zacs-Master]

If only you were on the internet, roadman, and could look up what it meant.

[ToraToraTora]

Well she'd know, it was a Noo Layba/Dubya production. TBF though she makes some valid observations. She takes a lot of words to basically say what a lot of us have been saying over the last few days. We cannot assume they want to live like they do in the civilised world. My Hindsight thread was intended to explore alternatives to what came to pass in the "something must be done" phase.

[Gromit]

I do not agree with her.
I never bought into the West’s reason for the war.

The Mujahedin were a mixture of Afghan Freedom Fighters and Foreign Jihadists fro Saudi Arabia.
When the Russian retreated the Mujahedin split. The Afghan fighters formed the Taliban to rule the country as an Islamist state. The foreign Jihadists became al qaeda to continue jihad against the west.

So Toynbee was wrong to ever have thought regime change was a legitimate response or just.

The Taliban and al qaeda tolerated each other, but didn’t like each other. The Taliban ruled from 1995 until they were ousted by the US/UK after 9/11.

The west was wounded and they thought a quick easy war would be retribution, even if the Taliban were the wrong enemy.

[ToraToraTora]

So what are you saying gromit? If we leave the Taliban alone and they do not harbour Al Quaeda they'll just impose their own barbaric system and not bother the West?

[Peter Pedant]

// What does hubris mean//

it is pride that the Gods feel they must punish
of course confined by the culture of the lace and time
and so ....
fortuna adiuvat fortes - fortune favours the brave
fortis - hard is used instead of audax
because audax may invite hubris....

speak of the devil - - - only Greekie or Latiny

[Peter Pedant]

longish essay - op-ed
not an awful lot about hubris

Long history of what happened post 2001 - and not of all it triumphant. and a sort of conclusion. Because we got it wrong, we should have seen that as the most likely outcome

but of course outcomes - - are what you make them....