Thinking Citizen Blog — The Lessons of The Afghanistan Withdrawal — Joe Biden, Sola Mahfouz. Ukraine, Gaza, Munich 1938
Thinking Citizen Blog — Monday is Foreign Policy Day
Today’s Topic: The Lessons of the Afghanistan Withdrawal — Joe Biden, Sola Mahfouz. Ukraine, Gaza, Munich 1938
Do the women of Afghanistan matter? How much? Did any American president send so many women into slavery as Joe Biden did when he ordered the US withdrawal from Afghanistan? Was that withdrawal justified by the fact that we had no compelling national interest there? or that the expense was just too high? Or, to the contrary, are we to put on the cost side of the ledger of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan both Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas massacre of October 7th as the fruits of American weakness demonstrated so definitively by the abandonment of Kabul?
Are these easy questions or hard questions? Do you have an analytical framework to make sense of such questions and answer them as best you can? If so, what is that framework?
A year after the withdrawal, David Ignatius of the Washington Post concluded that the withdrawal was “the right decision, but horribly executed.” Was he right then?
How does his judgment look today? Has the Taliban been an effective partner in extinguishing Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan? How complicated is this story? (See links seven and eight below).
Today, excerpts from an NPR article on Sola Mahfouz, an Afghan woman who escaped the Taliban tyranny and told her story in a book published last year, entitled “Defiant Dreams: The Story of An Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education.” Have you read it?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
EXCERPTS FROM “DEFIANT DREAMS: The Journey of an Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education”
1. “I began to grow up the day my mother warned me to stop laughing. She was terrified that even my momentary giggle could bring a strange man to our door, ready to yell, kidnap, or even kill to silence the sounds of a young woman.”
2. “Don’t dance outside your room she’d warn me.”
3. “Don’t sing in the hallways, where the sound can carry.”
NB: “I was 11 years old.”
EXCERPTS FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH MAHFOUZ AND CO-AUTHOR MALAINA KAPOOR — the SAT. Khan Academy, the beauty salon
1. “There was this accepted idea that women are stupid and I think when I started learning and was able to learn that contradicted this whole image … Once I was able to educate myself, I had to prove that I know things. And so, I had to take the SAT and that was not available in Afghanistan. Somehow, I was able to take the SAT and then apply to the universities and I got accepted and then another struggle was to get a visa. And it’s after many, many obstacles I was able to come, but it was not an easy journey.” (Mahfouz)
2. “I think my story would not be possible without internet. I was able to access internet to learn English, Khan Academy, read books. I think we can be creative a lot with our solutions because what I’ve been through is now reflected across the nation. I think technology can play a role to help in some ways.” (Mahfouz)
3. “The closure of beauty salons doesn’t maybe immediately strike you as the most pressing issue, but the reality is that beauty salons in Afghanistan have become one of the last places that women could gather freely. They also were a huge source of income for women, women who didn’t have men in their families or women who just needed to bring in more income, especially with the state of the economy … When you take away a woman’s education, when you take away her identity in terms of her job and her position within the workplace, really the way she looks does become one of the last markers of individuality. So, beyond taking away a physical space in that moment, the Taliban really demonstrated their will to erase women.” (Malaina Kapoor)
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN THE STORY OF MALALA YOUSAFZAI, winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize?
1. How many Malalas are too many?
2. How many Solas?
3. Have you forgotten the lesson of Munich 1938?
NB: Weakness is raw meat to a tiger. Did Biden loose the Taliban tiger? Should he be held accountable? How? Would Trump have done any different? or better? Or is the right analogy the alliance between the US and the Soviet Union during World War Two?
Is the Taliban the lesser evil we have allied with against Al-Qaeda? Analogies are a dime a dozen.
Picking the right one is an art not a science. What analogies do you build your world view upon?
FOOTNOTE — HOW MANY WOMEN ARE THERE IN AFGHANISTAN ANYWAY?
1. Estimates range from 14 million to 21 million.
2. Does it matter?
3. See the first three links below for a range of estimates.
CONCLUSION — Four questions
1. What is the best article you have ever read on Afghanistan?
2. Did you ever change your mind on US policy toward Afghanistan?
3. Have you ever taken a course that covered US policy toward Afghanistan? Did you learn anything worth remembering?
NB: Have you ever been to Afghanistan? Sharpest memories? 1? 3? 7?
Women in Afghanistan — Wikipedia
Demographics of Afghanistan — Wikipedia
‘Defiant Dreams’ memoir tells of Afghan woman who risked everything to get an education
Sola Mahfouz and Malaina Kapoor on Afghan women two years after Taliban takeover
Opinion | One year’s hindsight on Afghanistan: A good decision, horribly executed
Opinion | In Afghanistan, the Taliban has all but extinguished al-Qaeda
Defiant Dreams: The Journey of an Afghan Girl Who Risked Everything for Education
Thinking Citizen Blog — Could the Debacle in Afghanistan Have Been Avoided?
Thinking Citizen Blog — Afghanistan (Part II): Doing the Cost/Benefit Analysis
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic) Here is a link to the last four years of posts organized by theme: (including the
book on foreign policy)
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest or most important thing you learned in the last week, month, or year related to foreign policy.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in our life related to foreign policy.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is the key to depth of thought. The prospect of imminent publication, like hanging and final exams, concentrates the mind. A useful life long habit.
