Afghanistan: What Needs To Happen

The written version of the monologue

From BBC

It was announced today that the President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, has escaped from his country as the Taliban moved into Kabul. The capital of the nation has been swiftly and successfully captured, officially ending old governance and starting a new era of terror and tyranny.

It must be viewed as fact that what happened in the last weeks and months has been a colossal military disaster in which the Afghan government did not muster neither the courage nor the willpower to give its soldiers reinforcements, basic necessities like food, or words of lion-hearted inspiration. The Afghan government was too corrupt, unorganized, and fragile to conduct a serious defensive or counteroffensive operation, even though for the past twenty years the United States provided the training, military equipment, and the finances to the wellbeing of Afghanistan. But it also must be remembered that the idea of the United States to institute an American form of democracy in a country so different in history, culture, and ideology was a foolish and false hope.

But we must not look too deeply into the past and the present. What we are obligated to do is to prepare for what is coming in the days and years ahead.

With the Taliban in power, the United States and the West must be prepared for any future terrorist attack. Our intelligence apparatus must be strengthened to detect any evidence of a planned attack that will endanger the United States and its people. This course of action has to be done and operated efficiently and judiciously.

We also must not forget the massive displacement of Afghan refugees. Despite the present notion that bringing Afghan refugees into the United States will be too much of a risk, I present this alternative reality. If we shun these people away, what will become of them? The Afghan women will be slaves enclosed in the unbreakable box of submission, stripped of human rights and dignities. No Afghan girl will ever live in a future of independence, as long as the Taliban is there to strip them of healthcare and education. Afghan men will bear the burden of seeing others treated as mere objects and forced into a system where self-determination is a mere fabrication.

Our duty to ourselves as well as others will be preserved if we give our hand of fatherly care to Afghan people who seek to live freely. The time to prove to ourselves and the rest of the world that we are truly the force of good in this murky world is now. We cannot rid the Taliban now, for America and Afghanistan are tired of war. But, we can save these people from darkness, and I have firm faith that it will be all worth it in the end.