It’s easy for us in the West to falsely assume that the entire world is like us. It’s easy to assume when you live in high trust societies or societies that are built on high trust, where respect for the Law, respect for others, respect for honesty and probity is key, that the Third World has the same culture. Sadly that’s not the case. Whilst there are undoubtedly many people in Third World nations and cultures who can transcend these cultures and their upbringing, there’s a lot, probably a majority of Third Worlders, who do not and cannot escape from how they were socialised.
For us being brought up with a Western First World mindset, being corrupt is a problem as is dishonesty in business and in personal relations. But there are large swathes of the Third World where such things are not seen as problems but as normal socially acceptable things. In a lot of the world it’s normal to be corrupt or dishonest or to lie for your own advantage or that of your tribe. It’s also normal in a lot of the Third World, especially the Islamic bit of that world, to treat women like dirt and to exploit Western beliefs that women should not be treated like dirt to gain advantage for the men of these cultures.
Unfortunately there are some organisations and individuals who are not recognizant as to how different Third World cultures are from our own. They assume that the Third Worlders they are dealing with in some of the most Third World hell holes in existence will play by the same rules as we in the West play. The problem is they don’t play that way. A good example of this is to be found in a statement by the George W Bush Presidential Centre which has criticised the current US government’s policy of being more restrictive regarding the entry to the USA of Afghans. The GWB Presidential Centre whined about how terrible it is that the US Government had decided to restrict the entry of Afghans because of criminality by some Afghans.
The GWB Presidential Centre’s statement was countered on X by someone who is I assume a veteran of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What this person pointed out was that the mindset in these places is not the same as that in the West. They said that these Third Worlders had a different set of priorities and values that were incompatible with those of the West and gave a few examples of how Western assumptions about what’s positive and what’s not and what’s right and what’s wrong were spurned by the very people the West was trying to help.
Read this piece by InfantryDort ( @infantrydort ) and think about what it shows about the difference between Third World and First World mindsets. You can find the original source of this piece here:
InfantryDort said:
*“Ok GWOT vets. It looks like the world needs more story time because apparently they don’t get it yet.
The aim is to highlight the dangers of mass unvetted migration from where we fought, and the third world as a whole.
Let’s set aside all of the heinous things we’ve seen the native population do to one another. Set aside the child r*pe, bestiality, murder of innocents. Today, let’s just talk about how most of them were purpose built to enrich themselves through a culture of corruption. I’ll start:
We tried dissuading Afghans from planting opium in Kandahar. Tried getting them to farm saffron instead. We helped them dig ditches, lined them with rubber, and gave them equipment. They took the rubber to shingle the roofs of their homes, cannibalized the equipment for private use, sold the saffron, and planted opium anyway.
On payday, every single officer in an Afghan soldier’s chain of command would get a cut of their pay. Until the soldier got next to nothing. Hence why they stole everything to make ends meet.
In Iraq, some U.S. NGO made the locals a water park. Complete with an artificial pool and jet skis. When we turned it over, the locals drained the pool to irrigate their crops and cannibalized the jet skis for their own farming engines. (This was a stupid project so I get it….kinda)
In Iraq, we had to give money to local business to stimulate the economy and use “money as a weapon system”. They took millions and left the country, bought cars, or bought weapons. Thats just a few, I have many more.
One could argue they steal due to poor conditions, but how is that America’s problem? You’re seeing many of these types steal billions here just this week. The thing that keeps those folks acting “correctly” over there is tyranny. A dictator. That’s why their punishments are so violent for theft and such.
The West is incapable of chopping off the hand of a thief. And why should we have to? What benefit does it give us to surround ourselves with people like that? At the end of the day, in my experience, people from that area of the world will do anything to save themselves, especially the men.
On a raid in Baghdad I had a target use his wife as a shield after the breach. Most will leave their women and children behind in a war zone for their own safety and never look back. Remember the images of the planes from the Afghan withdrawal? A man who will leave his family to die for his own safety is not a man I personally would want to share my neighborhood with in western civilization.
You don’t have to hate these people. But you have to understand who and what they are. It would take generations to have any chance at assimilating them. How do you screen for “the good ones” from cultures that keep no records? Our experiential sampling size is simply too large to ignore. To save our civilization, we are going to have to make hard decision on who we let in, if any. For the organization below, this is not the hill to die on. For the GWOT vets, fire away. I’m sure your stories are better than mine.”*
Please note that this poster is commenting on the statement of the GWB Presidentia Centre is included below. The responses that I saw to this statement from ordinary X users were overwhelmingly negative with some expressing disgust at George W Bush’s wing of the Republican Party.
Quote: The actions of a man charged with a heinous crime have derailed the lawful U.S. immigration applications of people from 18 countries so far, including Afghanistan. Afghans are facing uncertainty at home and in the U.S. Read why we can't turn our back on Afghans and other immigrants due to one man's crime: https://bushcenter.org/publications/should-we-turn-our-backs-on-afghans-in-america-because-of-one-mans-crimes
I think it’s a lot more than one crime by Afghans that has created the desire in the US government to restrict the entry of Afghans. My own view is that groups like the GWP Presidential Centre are being a bit naive. There may be a lot more going on, intelligence wise at least, behind the US government’s decision regarding the entry of Afghans than just one high profile crime. I suspect that the Trump Administration is not just playing to its base with this decision and I would not be surprised if at some later date information emerges to show that this decision was a harsh but necessary one based on the need to protect the integrity of the United States.