Perhaps one reason the United States failed to create a functioning government in Afghanistan is that it tried to force woke ideology on the Afghan people at gunpoint.

The U.S. government was determined to export American notions of “gender equity” to a culture in which the concept is utterly foreign. This was more than just basic decency, such as trying to ensure that girls can go to school rather than being forced into a lifetime of sex slavery. Instead, it involved at least $787 million in U.S. funds spent over there (as of March) for “gender programs.” This, even though (according to Richard Hanania of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology) “there is no Dari or Pashto word for the terms ‘gender’ and ‘gender equality.'”

So, Americans have been pushing uberwoke concepts such as “gender mainstreaming” and giving “trainings to 1,105 Afghan men in which they could discuss their own gender roles and examine male attitudes that are harmful to women.” One can only imagine how these men reacted — perhaps they had a touchy-feely cry session?

Our brilliant leaders also insisted that women be integrated into the Afghan military forces, something that was not only anathema to them but frowned upon even in the U.S. until quite recently. Indeed, there is already historical evidence that otherwise promising efforts to enlist Afghans into the anti-Taliban cause instead ran into open revolt against gender-norming.

As early as 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry was saying “there can be no peace” unless “Afghan women … have a seat at the table” and that enlisting women into the Afghan armed forces “is going to be a key part of this transition.” Maybe he should have concentrated on victory and peace first before worrying about imposing a woke social agenda.

But have no fear, even if wokeness hasn’t worked yet, the diplomatic-establishment punditocracy thinks there is hope. All-knowing columnist Tom Friedman, the darling of the global elites, posits that the Taliban will moderate specifically because of “pushback from wives and daughters that they’ve never encountered before — precisely because of the social, educational and technological seeds of change planted by the U.S. over the last 20 years.” Yes, really. That and also the liberating effects of “iPhones, Facebook and Twitter.”

Eureka! Who knew that the only thing necessary to make the Taliban kinder and gentler is a bad “ratio” from American Twitter mobs?

Original Source Location: Turns out gender studies was not the key to nation-building |Image: Ajam Media Collective

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