Answering Readers, Part 6

Biblical (תַּנַ״ךְ) depiction of
the flight from Sodom and Gomorrah

The Afghanistan Matter |
Friday – July 31, 2026

Health issues, again, continue to bother me, and if you want to read more about that, then click here. Again, because of these health issues, I remain compromised, which will affect my writing, but I am still going to attempt to answer the questions of my readers in the many letter that they (you) have submitted to me, but again because of this health issue that I am currently dealing with, I am not quite as effective as usual and I am not able to remain true to the fidelity of my writing, which means that you should expect a certain amount of drift away from the norm. Again too, this is a part of my so-called "Answering Readers series", where I attempt to address the concerns of you my readers – welcome. As usual, I do not have too many rules in this series, but one rule I have is that when you submit a letter to me, you must use language that is appropriate, which would preferably be language void of profanity. If you do submit a letter containing profanity, I may never get around to your particular letter, and if I get around to answering it, that is if it contains a question that you seek me to answer, I will likely editorialize that letter/question whenever I quote it in the relevant post addressed to answering that post.

    Now, If I do indeed end up editorializing your letter or some part of your letter in my large quotation, then I will indicate this by the usage of two brackets ([text]). Now, so far I have only found the need to editorialize one letter, and I must admit that I would prefer to keep it that way; again, since I am unable to control my readers, something that I would not even want to do, I am still happy to receive your letters, but since I am in charge here I am also the one deciding what gets through and what remains hidden from the rest of my readers. Since, this blog still receives few viewers I am not receiving too many letters, which means that I am not always going to be able to keep up the pace of answering one letter per week, since I am going to run out of letters to address in about the following week, and unless you continue to submit letters to me, I am simply going to have to stop making more posts in this series until you write me some more letters. I should also, in light of the letter that I am going to address in this post, mention that you are free to write me more than one letter and I will be happy to address it, and that is precisely what I am going to do in this post, something that I will explain later. While I attempt to protect the personal and private sphere of the author behind each letter, I must stress that you really do not need to reveal your name, and this is why it is default for me to assume that if you address me in a letter that you prefer to be anonymous, unless you want me to mention your name. I keep returning to this point, but it must be made, because people tend to believe that their name and other personal information is very important, but for the most part this does not matter for the purpose of me answering your questions. This is why I will only reveal name and personal information upon being given permission to do this; now, I may engage in conjecture if that becomes necessary, provided you have not given me enough information, such as what happened in the previous post.

    Addressing the letter at hand: I found no need to editorialize this letter in my quotation, but I should add that a hard voice may be used in this letter that may offend some readers, but because I deem the word used to not be offensive or a profanity, I have still decided to allow it to remain. This is also a short letter, but since I know certain information that I have been given permission to publish in this post and in one previous post, I will rely on this when I address the question, because again, the purpose of this series is for me to address the questions of my readers. The man in question is again Mr. Abdalla Hossain who wrote the inaugural letter in this series, and again I have been given permission to publish his name and his religious affiliation, namely Islam.

    Mr. Abdalla Hossain aks in this letter:

"Hello again Mr. Dutt, I was thinking about the failed U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. Was it righteous for the Taliban (the Mujahideen) to kick them (the Americans and their allies) the hell out of there?" — Abdalla Hossain.

Before I can proceed to deal with your question Mr. Hossain, I must point out that the question you are asking is rather controversial and highly political, and while I generally refuse to engage in the game of petty politics on this page, read "Should You Engage with Politics?", I have still decided to answer this question in as honest a way I can.

    Now, because you are a Moselm Mr. Hossain, I can imagine that you are animated by the modern spirit of identity politics, which means that you may or may not be biased in asking this question, something that is indicated, in my view, by your strong language here. That stated, I still hold that you very much have asked a legitimate question and really a question that most Westerners who claim to be serious should consider: why did the United States fail in its disastrous intervention in Afghanistan, and really was it righteous for the Taliban, the defenders of the faith and of the land, to kick the Americans and its tail out?* Now, we should make it clear that the armed forces of the United States (America) invaded Afghanistan in 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attack with the pretext that they were going to overthrow the people in charge, namely the Taliban, but of course no such thing really happened, because instead the politicians in charge decided to yes remove the Taliban from power, in Kabul that was, but then they decided to stay behind and engage in a kind of nation-building exercise, really neocolonialism, and this meant that they with force decided to impose Western style education and ways of life on the people of Afghanistan, particularly in urban areas, as they, for the most part, had real troubles reaching the remote areas of Afghanistan. Of course, they also never truly defeated the Taliban, as they remained in different "stay-behind" operations within certain, often rural, areas of the country. Now, it should also be remembered that Afghanistan in now way is a "nation-state" in the sense of European style nation-states, and this is why the Americans and the Westerners decided to engage in nation-building to begin with, read "The Problem with Nationalism". During this shameful episode of Western decadence on full display, such teachings as "Queer theory" was imposed on the people of Afghanistan, which likely with great certainty contributed to the later backlash that the American forces faced in Afghanistan during their evacuation in 2021. Really, it had become clear long before 2021 that the truly oppressing force in Afghanistan was the Americans, not the Taliban, despite the American and the Western propaganda saying otherwise. I think that you would be prudent in asking yourself this: what but liberators would the Taliban be considered in the eyes of the people, those many different people's making up the Afghan population, read "My Views on Multiculturalism"? Indeed, would it not be quite right to consider the Taliban the true heroes and the true freedom fighters in this conflict, read "Heroism of Cynicism?"? Then there is of course the, at least for the Americans, uncomfortable fact that they, the American government, funded the Taliban in the first place, when the Taliban still consisted of the Mujahideen (مُجَاهِدِين) in the 1970's and the 1980's. Will the United States ever stop with its meddling in foreign affairs? Apparently not, because they, as well as many others, seem to consider America's mission in the world to be the "world police", read "Clarifying Notes on the United States", and as the world police they have a moral duty to intervene on behalf of the humanist axiom. If truth be told about the Taliban fighters, the fact is actually that most of them had no idea about 9/11, because the Taliban mostly consists of highly irregular forces composing an assortment of different people who are there for religious reasons, but still more so for the reason that the Americans used to "occupy their valley", and when someone of a foreign condition appeared without good reason in their backyard they grew, for good reasons, weary. Well, since the Americans used to occupy their valley, and since they were semi professional soldiers, it would seem more than expected that the Americans in the end were kicked out; now I should add, of course, that the Americans themselves had, for the most part, tired themselves out on Afghanistan, because they came to realize that they would simply not make the Afghan people submit to their crusade against tradition, tradition with a lowercase t that is.

    In the end, it all depends on your perspective, but if you are concerned with tradition, again (t)radition with a lowercase t, then you would surely be forgiven for celebrating the Americans leaving Afghanistan, and on their own accord technically, even though they certainly were kicked out for all intents and purposes. In fact, the puppet government that had been propped up by the Americans began to collapse even before the last American soldier had left the country back in 2021. Really, what else but a complete and utter failure should this be considered, and yet more proof of why Western interventionism must always fail? The assumptions involved here and the hubris is just too monstrous to begin to describe.

Reginald Drax (AKA, M. C. Dutt) – July 31, 2026.

Footnote(s)

* For more on this I must direct you to my post on Western military interventions and nation-building exercises in general, as it would carry this post too far afield to engage in a prolonged discussion about that. You may also consider reading my post addressing the troubles of modern warfare.