Peterkin

Thank God for civic-minded foxes, without whom so many hen-houses might go unguarded!

Top-down rule through intimidation becomes a way of life; it is embedded in patriarchal, militaristic cultures. That the strong and privileged have the right to demand obedience from lower ranks and mete out punishment for infractions of rules made by themselves and imposed on those who can't or are not permitted to oppose them. It's called a pecking order, or chain of command or meritocracy - but it's still institutional bullying. Under such a regime, that is the behaviour children learn; that is the hierarchy in which they must make or find or be shown their place. They don't know anything else.

The history of the USA, never afraid to make the hard choices, is littered with no-longer-useful allies under various buses. I don't suppose the Afghans would have known about the Kurds?

It can't have been an easy choice for them.

Okay. I thought the topic was Justice - concept, theory and practice. Terrorism, treason, insurrection and inciting to riot are all crimes under the present legal codes of our respective countries, and thus would come under the auspices of justice. However, if you think otherwise, there is no need to pursue the matter.

It's hard to see the "good" side of ripped and scorched corpses, mangled and scorched houses, poisoned and scorched farms. The recent wars, declared and hooded, that the US has waged against much weaker, poorly equipped nations, designated unilaterally by the US as enemies, have not looked good to me - not at all. I didn't choose the bad; Some US administrations chose it and the US military carried it out - with some help from the governments and armies of the UK and Canada - and without the support of a great many citizens of all three countries. I've travelled and lived (briefly) in the US. I came to know some Americans, both who live there and who came here to live. Many of them very good people, and those very good people are as pessimistic and afraid of the others as I am. That's raising optimism to a level far beyond my capacity. The operative word is 'adequately' - and you should probably preface it with "In the absence of evidence to the contrary," I don't see either of those conditions met.

Ah. So the only questions remaining: How much worse did they make "the situation"? and What [in all currencies] did it cost?

And if they looked more like this, we'd save a lot of street surface for pedestrians, especially if they looked more like this. And put to better use - the parking lots for all those extra people we never know where to put and the driveways to make fresh food. It's not as if people hadn't been thinking about these problems!

America and the most of the world had been quite successfully ignoring that situation for some little while. Why, suddenly, when they're still upset about their towers and up to the thigh in Iraqi sand-fleas, do Americans become concerned with Afghan women? Not Nigerian women, not Saudi women, not Chinese or Argentine women, just the the Afghan ones? As for human rights and minorities.... that's too deep a can of worms for one meal.

The most obvious option was to stay out. Ignore what situation? Several icons of capitalist might in the US were attacked by unidentified terrorists one morning. The nation of Afghanistan had never done anything to America, even thought the same Islamist regime had been in power for years. It happened to be one of a dozen countries in which anti-American groups were tolerated by the local authorities. The US demanded the man they identified as responsible (but could not meet the legal burden of an extradition hearing) and That's not exactly standard international relations - or we'd be under bombardment for the past years, having refused to hand over Meng Wanzhou, a foreigner on Canadian soil, under the protection of Canadian law, whom the US wants for crimes the US claims this person has committed against it. If there was a situation in Afghanistan, it was entirely one-sided. Much as it was in Iraq. Whatever the real motives of the major American players were and whether anybody besides the war profiteers and mercenaries came out ahead, the stated purposes of all that carnage were not met and not even convincingly pursued. As for the cessation of Islamist terrorism against the US. There had been one attempt before September 2001, the bomb in the World trade center in 1993. And none since. (Lots of home-grown stuff that doesn't get mega resources committed to it!) So, if the Islamist attacks were stopped, it was the red nail polish effect. (You don't see elephants in cherry trees.) The third, least costly, in lives, land, material and political losses, and most mutually beneficial option would have been favourable trade agreements to gradually raise the Afghan standard of living and engender a spontaneous interest in western goods and ideas. The US can't force its version of democracy and values on another people, any more than the Russians were able to force theirs on some of the same peoples.

Not if you recall all the demands of "Bring them to justice!" Then it concentrated on the one man who made some videotapes - which is all we know for certain - taunting his enemies. It's not unusual for people to mean revenge when they say "justice"; it's not unusual to call the military invasion of nation "punishment" for what its extremists may have done. It's not unusual for those scales of justice to have a witch in one pan and NATO in the other. When governments act like offended individuals, far too many people suffer undeserved harm. The feeling of anger and desire for vengeance are natural. For an administrative process to be ruled by those feelings is counterproductive. We need the justice system to be more dispassionate, consistent and balanced than individual persons can be. And in order for that to happen, we need a clearly articulated principle of justice.

What was "the job"? I mean, of the Americans, in Afghanistan? The pretext was looking for Bin Laden, but what was the real purpose and how would tell know when it's done?

If other nations keep a country under attack and foreign occupation for two thousand years, chances are, it will be ruled between invasions by whatever fanatical freedom fighters the empires failed to eradicate. It takes two generations to recover from the beleaguered mind-set, two more to build an economy and social structure stable enough, secure enough to liberalize its laws and customs, to expand its intellectual horizons and perhaps another two to form productive relationships with other sovereign nations. The Afghans have rarely had the luxury of such long periods of peace-on-the-land in which to develop.

The number was based, roughly, on the Singapore model. I was talking about the commuter train. Some good ones do exist - even the VIA rail service in Toronto isn't too bad; it moves lots of white-collar workers from the new freckled-brick subdivisions, way out beyond the old suburbs, to the city railway station, from where they take a bus, streetcar or subway to their offices downtown. Some good subway systems exist, as well. They move lots lower-paid workers around the city and proximate suburbs in much less comfort. In both cases, the passengers are free of the responsibility for a big hollow lump of steel that's got to sit idle someplace expensive until it's need to covey one person back out to the subdivisions. The weight ratio is slightly lower than the Eurostar, at 0.9 tons each, if we double up on car rides. But the parking problem is incomparable more difficult and less cost-effective with personal vehicles, as is the traffic congestion and the road maintenance. Well, of course! I agree wholeheartedly. The pandemic is helping with that: many employees don't want to go back to the office. Working from home can be a big part of the mix. Improved, more accessible public transit is another part. Ride sharing, bike sharing, community minibus, various forms of taxi, shuttle and rental services can be added to the mix. Decentralized work-places may be another long-term consideration. There will still be personal vehicles of all types, as long as there is an infrastructure on which they can operate. If/when car ownership becomes so expensive that only a small minority can indulge in it, the majority probably won't want to pay for their roads and support structure. No, they're more likely to burst into spontaneous flame. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a33917474/hyundai-santa-fe-kia-optima-sorento-fire-recall/ Electric ones, too, though the incidence has been disproportionately reported. https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/17/news/companies/electric-car-fire-risk/index.html Bicycles and canoes are safer.

Or that you need to stop blundering in everywhere you don't understand? Like, let other peoples make their own peaceful changes at their pace, in their own way? Hardly an apt comparison. Germany, in 1939, actually attacked other countries with the intent of conquest and occupation. Afghanistan has been invaded more than a dozen times - three times by Britain - and has never afaik invaded any other nation. Its one and unchangeable fault is its location at the crossroads of empires. Do you wonder it's given rise to a breed a fierce warriors?

From a suburb? No, I was thinking more along the lines of a commuter train , which can be under, on, or above the ground. About 1000 per train. If all 10,000 in a single bedroom community start work at the same time and leave home at the same time (which strikes me as a somewhat Stepfordish arrangement, as well as a biggish suburb of all office workers), they'd either have to put ten trains on that run, with dangerously close departure times, or put more cars on each train. A difficult logistical problem, I agree. One option: the same as what you do with all the private cars: park them someplace. Except in a parking lot that doesn't eat up enormous amounts of downtown prime real estate and they get vacuumed. Of course, some of them could take children to school and music lessons, tourists to the museums, midwives to house-calls, pilgrims to a cathedral and house-persons to grocery and other shopping trips and so forth. I have no idea. The Japanese, Taiwanese, Torontonian and Paris transport authorities probably have it down to the second. Oh, no! I have suggested one possible solution which has been carried on successfully by some cities for about 150 years, implemented less successfully by others, and made a complete hash of by some. When the whole family goes on an outing, they can order a minivan just for their particular destination. Bonus: they don't have to lug the kids and baggage from the far end of a multi-acre parking lot to the entrance of the arena or park. If they're going camping, they can sign one of the community vehicles out for a weekend or a week. People who intend do this every weekend should probably invest in their own private transport, but that doesn't mean everyone else needs to. Anyway, I doubt the little brother, dog, spare clothes etc. are needed on the way to every cello lesson, or that the cello has to come along to the science museum. What's wrong with custom fitting?

No, they obviously want a safe, fast, clean, quiet commuter train with comfortable seats, plenty of leg-room, a holder for one's thermos and good lights to do the crossword, maybe a changing cubicle in case they jogged to the station instead of taking one of shuttles..... That's if they're still commuting to a downtown office in that enlightened retrofuture.

But very practical for the purpose it serves. As is every other form of transport. Different kinds or vehicle for different environments and uses. Of course, all of this is very much beside the point of the OP question.

Cleaner, cheaper, quieter, neater! Any reason there can't be a wind turbine and a solar array over, and the best available storage battery under, every charging station? https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/hybrid-wind-and-solar-electric-systems One such alternative is clean, cheap, quiet and and healthy.

The UK brass is fuming griping about it - as if they had never considered the possibility of the US withdrawing (After all, US presidents always promise actions they don't intend to carry out!) or had time to calculate the logistics (Those two decades just flew by!) and now will have to leave some Afghan personnel behind. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/16/some-afghan-allies-left-behind-uk-defence-secretary-concedes-afghanistan Does anyone recall Brexit?

Of course, reducing the absolute number of vehicles on any road (like closing downtown to all but foot-traffic, and restricting narrow streets to bicycles only and main streets to public transport) is an excellent idea. So is improvement of mass transit, both urban and highway. So are the driverless taxi cabs and vans (though self-driving cars have been getting some pretty bad press). But that doesn't make each vehicle more effective or more efficient. I wondered what Dimreepr meant by that distinction.

Cars, as they are now and as they're envisioned for the near future, convey passengers and baggage from one place to another reliably and quickly. In what way should a car be more effective?

I know what it is. I was wondering about the specific source of that much biofuel. Corn is an environmental and economic disaster. Other grains are sorely needed for food. Algae?

This was the slowest-motion train-wreck I've ever witnessed (and i've been witnessing through the train-littered second half of the 20th century). Everybody knew how it would end from day 1. Except this time, hopefully, they won't leave behind so many no-longer-useful allies. Well, that's something. But I suspect it's not going to be any United States of Al for most of those rescued Afghans.

Just as matter of interest: What biofuel would power private passenger vehicles?