Two years since America’s calamitous and reckless withdrawal from Afghanistan, turning it over to the Taliban, the country has experienced an enormous decline.

Whatever one might say about the incompetence and lack of foresight regarding US interventionism in the region, and there are abundances of each, girls had at least been allowed the basic right to go to school. Since the Taliban takeover, around 8 million girls have been denied education beyond primary school.

Women and girls are also oppressed in other ways, such as being forced to cover up in public; they are not allowed to visit parks, gyms, or public baths; are denied most occupations; and have been punished for breaking Sharia law with prison, lashings, being stoned, and extensive torture. Recently, Associated Press News reported that the Taliban carried out its second known public execution since seizing power, letting the son of an alleged murder victim kill the alleged perpetrator. The same report also stated that according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, 274 men, 58 women, and two boys had been publicly flogged in the six months leading up to May. Medieval is perhaps the best way to describe the barbarism with which the country is been run.

In a report conducted by the UN Development Program in October 2022, it was stated that virtually all Afghans were living in poverty. The economy has shrunk by 30 per cent, and more than 90 per cent of the population are suffering from food insecurity.

Such unthinkable regression of an entire country reminds one of the Iranian revolution in 1979. Similarly, Sharia law was imposed on women, leading to mass protests that continue even today. In the haunting memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi, who experienced the transformative time as a teacher, wrote that, ‘Living in the Islamic Republic is like having sex with someone you loathe.’ This seems to be the exact case in Afghanistan, some 40 years after Iran’s misfortune.

This situation should be a slap on the face of those who flippantly clapped at the US withdrawal. There seems to be a tendency of naïve idealists, especially in first-world countries, to underestimate the capacity of human failure to take hold of a nation. They may fail to appreciate how rare prosperity, freedom, and peace actually are. Ensconced in security, many mistake a complex situation for good versus evil where failure to succeed results in a dire state for people left behind to live under these failed or terrorist regimes. Having cheapened the buttresses of society that protect these basic rights in their own country, there are some who then fail to notice basic rights being denied to entire nations.

This type of cheap idealism, divorced from the real world, has taken centre stage in today’s public forum in Western societies. Realty has been shrunk to a perception of feelings and whether or not they have been hurt. People are getting fired for ‘misgendering’. A minister for women can’t define what a woman is. Comedy is made almost impossible due to the delicate feelings of some in the radical gender theory corner.

While so much energy is spent (or misspent) on these issues, perhaps it’s worthwhile to remember that not too far away, women are being flogged for simply wanting to feel the sun on their faces. One chief tenet to always keep in mind, an antidote to cheap idealism: don’t make the best the enemy of the good.