Afghanistan: now is not the time to give up

People who oppose the war in Afghanistan often seem to assume that the Afghan people were happy living under the Taliban. The fact that for 50% of the population, the women, were treated as sub-human is enough to demonstrate the invalidity of this view. 

Furthermore, you only have to read the books of Khaled Hosseini or watch programmes such as The Boy from Bamiyan as aired on Channel 4 recently to get a sense of the dreadful combination of deprivation and terror the Taliban instilled on the people of Afghanistan. 

 The countries who invaded Afghanistan ten years ago cannot abandon its people now at this crucial point. We must continue to work with and on behalf of the people of Afghanistan who still need our help in a vast range of ways for the future of the country, the region, and the world.

Arguing the Case for Optimism

I went to a debate yesterday and it made me realise something about myself: my strong belief in world citizenship necessitates that I agree with liberal intervention. I believe not that I have a right to decide what happens in Afghanistan to the Afghan people, but that every citizen in every country of the world has the right, the responsibility and the duty to protect every and any other citizen from what they consider to be undue harm. Further, each citizen of the world has the duty to ensure that every fellow individual has access to the needs and the comforts of existence, not just for that individual's benefit but for the benefit of all of humanity now and in the future. 


To hold this belief requires that I do not have an overtly pessimistic view of humankind. I share with Karl Marx the view that the society and the systems in which we currently operate have the potential to change dramatically for the better. I also share with many Buddhists the view that each and every human on this planet - existing and future - has the potential to do good, to be kind, and to love. 


I believe, unlike the predictions of the '1984 brigade', that the vast improvements in technology in recent years have overwhelmingly been a force for good in recent decades. The Internet means that, however much their governments may try to stop them, activists and protesters in countries such as Syria and Egypt can be and have been heard. It has the potential to do more than that. It has the potential to create global forces for change which encourage, on the one hand, closer ties between different cultures, and on the other hand a strong sense of individual freedom and acceptance which allows different religions, cultures and beliefs to co-exist peacefully.  


While I would always tend to maintain a level of cynicism about governments and companies and their motives and aspirations, above all I am an optimist because without optimism our world would never be anything but a dark pit of despair, violence and hatred.  Without optimism there could be no love, no laughter and no humanity.