Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdl | Hacker News Reader

No. If you sold Afghanistan to people in colonial style, it would be perfectly within the power of a middling nation or corporation (or hedge fund) to deal with it. The problem is having unreasonable expectations ; if you just care about killing terrorists and some mining, you don't need to deal with most of it.

(The article says this, too -- the issue is that the country is too poor to be worth the effort to conquer.)

View on HN

I suspect you are correct, although it is unfortunate. Perhaps a better question to ask would be, is there a place in the world for people who just want to live a simple life? Since really what the 'conquering' is all about is keeping residents in Afghanistan (not necessarily indigenous Afghans though) from impacting the rest of the world in what are perceived to be negative ways.

And it is pretty clear from recent events that this is something of a pipe dream anyway.

Yeah, I don't care about Afghanistan as a country at all. I do want anyone reasonable there to be able to have a decent life, just like I feel about anyone else in the world. Immigration and mobility, combined with individual sovereignty over ones own land and possessions, is probably the best model for that.

> residents in Afghanistan from impacting the rest of the world

Isn't that what an defensive army and border police are for? If an residents in Afghanistan want to harm me, they have to first get over to my country.

Well, the two main harms claimed by USA as their reasons for [continued] invasion - funding&sheltering terrorist groups and producing a majority of worlds heroin - don't need anyone from Afganistan to get over to USA. And you can't isolate a border from the outside even with total cooperation with all their neighbors (which USA doesn't have), even North Korea doesn't achieve that in their borders.

If you let them build up without any restrictions, as AQ did under the Taliban and in Sudan, you end up with quantity and scale of attacks which border defense can't mitigate sufficiently.

I am off the impression that the quantity and scale of attacks which was seen in 9/11 is currently being restricted by a locked door in airplanes, and less passive passengers.

Terrorists have weapons other than planes, you know.

yeah,like Afghan soldiers are going to attack USA at its borders with tanks and fighter aircrafts... they did not give a f. about America until USA came to invade them.

Actually, rdl was referring to Bin Laden's folks who, as non-Afghans, were using the country for a base of operations early on to train.

And had previously done the same in North Africa.

I think this works in way more than one direction. US has been in the business of impacting other countries in what are perceived to be negative ways. US is by no means unique to be in this position. The last one was British, and compared to the others that have come before them, they sort of unraveled semi-gracefully rather than implode in a cataclysm.

Interesting to see what our lifetimes have in store for us.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com