Originally Posted by
Richard Dangle
I know a little of both International Relations and History at the academic level. In the big picture I doubt the Taliban "victory" will much change the course of Jihad. Something I believe the West kicked off a thousand years ago, but I agree that viewpoint may be highly debateable.
I'll see you debateable and raise you one to "load of horseapples."
Jihad was alive and well in the 7th and 8th centuries, which included the Muslim Invasion of Europe (after the subjugation by conquest of North Africa, which included a great many culturally Christian areas) through Spain, and into France. That was three hundred years before "the West" ended up in the Holy Land, although the Greek/Eastern Roman Empire (that "other" branch of "Christendom" before the great Schism) had to deal with the never ending pressure and attacks by Muslims into their lands. It took France and then Spain, from Tours/Poiters in 732 through to Granada, a bit over 700 years to finally get rid of them (la Reconquista was in a lot of ways a Crusade, though of a different Character than the ones referred to as The Crusades).
I mean, if you are going to reach back, maybe reach all the way back if you want to discuss jihad (both external and internal).
I also recommend, for a fairly objective look at the Crusades, Thomas Asbridge. (He used both Western and Islamic sources in his research)
He goes to some pains to de-mythologize that period in history, and along the way discusses how the mythology dreamed up by 18th and 19th century Europeans can be compared and contrasted with the mythology dreamed up by 19th and 20th century Muslims. Very thought provoking.
One of the best takeaways for me was the emphasis on how, as seen from the PoV of the Muslim leadership as the First Crusades began, the area in question was along the frontiers/marches of the lands under the Caliph. Worth noting that two major political centers of Islam at the time were in Baghdad and in Egypt. What the Christians called the Holy Land, or
Outremer, was "out there on the frontier."
(Granted, by the time the Crusades were over some of that had changed, in no small part due to Saladin's political savvy).
And to bring this up to current events: that whole baggage, by which I mean the piles of dubious mythology that Asbridge alludes to, infects the current rhetoric on the larger cultural conflict that the Taliban, and various other Wahabi and Islamist sorts, have taken on as their own form of jihad in the modern day. Your point on the "why do we insist in inflicting our culture on other parts of the world" I roughly agree with, but, there's that small political problem of The Rest Of The World wanting to be in the club: the United Nations.
The UN (built from the ground up by Enlightenment based Westerners) lets anyone join, but since it is based on Western assumptions, there are some very odd fits there.
As I read the news coverage (with the usual grain of salt) I note that the Taliban playbook has not changed much from their playbook in the 80's and 90's. Like them or not, they appear to be pretty consistent in their approach.
They are at risk of the kind of brain drain that used to be described (imperfectly) as one of a number of reasons that the Soviets put up "the Wall in 1961" between East and West Germany - which was to keep people in, not out.
Iraq and Syria experienced something similar - brain drain - in the last couple of decades as the wars there invoked a non-trivial refugee flow among the intelligensia. Not sure if the Taliban can stem that tide, but I suspect that they'll try. (Interesting to note how many are reported to have left in the past year).
To get their recently acquired military aircraft up and flying {and thus return to the topic at hand for this sub forum} I am sure that there are companies aplenty who will, for a price, be happy to take care of that for them.
The question is, who will donate the money?
The Americans stopped recently, for obvious reasons.