US-UK call for a withdrawal of their forces in Afghanistan
During my research on what to write regarding the class, I stumbled upon a news article in the Guardian newspaper. The title of the article, “How the heroin trade explains the US-UK failure in Afghanistan,” serves as a launching pad for my discussion. The article explains the history of the Afghan war. Afghanistan war is hyped to be one of the longest wars in modern history. Since the invasion of Afghanistan 18 years ago, the fighting continues. During this period, there have been over one hundred thousand troops deployed to fight in Afghanistan. Out of these soldiers, 2,300 of them have lost their lives.
The cost of the war has not only been on the human aspect but also the financial aspect. The Afghanistan war has since the forces spend over one trillion dollars on military operations, training Afghanistan allied soldiers, and the overall nation-building. However, the failure of the war can be attributed to the nations’ appetite for resources that come from Afghanistan, which include and not limited to the heroine.
With this in mind, this paper is going to discuss the moral aspect of the war and whether the citizens of the United States and the United Kingdom should call for a withdrawal of their forces in Afghanistan. For starters, Kant’s theory emphasizes on duty. In Afghanistan, the people who are sending the troops into the war zones are executors of duties bestowed upon them by the citizens. They are bound by perfect duty where the moral obligation that has no exceptions. In this case, their actions and behavior have consequences, and they are bound to execute these actions bearing in mind no exception can be accorded to them despite their position.
From the article, we can learn that agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) overlooked the growth of opium. They let the production of opium grow from 100 tones in the 1970s to two thousands tonnes by 1991. The unprecedented growth resulted in Afghanistan becoming the world’s largest heroin producer. Before the class, most of us could be quick to judge the C.I.A. and condemn their incompetency and their inactivity that saw the rise in the production of heroin. However, after the Kant theory’s lesson, I hold a different opinion.
From Kant’s theory and explanation of imperfect duty, there are some duties that moral obligations are not required without exception. The C.I.A. fall in this bracket of imperfect duty. In their execution of their duty, they are guided by the overall good will of their actions. They do their actions, although unconventional, out of respect of moral law, and in this case the imperfect duty. I believe the leadership of C.I.A. at the time used maxim and established all the moral laws and the implication that it would have on the United States. From what we have learned in class regarding Kant regarding the contract that exists between the people and institutions, the C.I.A. was their purview. The bravery required to take such action necessary volition and will to execute as Kant explains in his moral theory.