Posted on 07/09/2009 6:52:46 PM PDT by jdfromny
It's not the troops; it's not the economy; it's not that it's mountainous and landlocked like Austria and Switzerland. It's the society. I write these words from Ghor province, and it's like the Jurassic Park in Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul, Nangahar ... keep going. A person can tool around in towns like Kabul, Jalalabad or Mazar-i-Sharif and build up hopes, but to extrapolate beyond the tangible is folly. Iraq is 1,000 years more advanced than Afghanistan. Nepal is far more connected to and cognizant of the outside world.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Guess not a fan of Afghanistan.
Isn't that Detroit?
read
“Girl with no future?” Is everyone in the chattering classes nuts? What about the future for families?
Hm, mayhaps... though if they wanted to win, they’d let the military off the chain and say “Tell us when it’s over.” more or less.
I linked the printable page. Here is the girl:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/photos/2009/jul/09/50283/
What do you expect? It is an islamic country!
I don’t know if you’ve read Yon before, but he was one of the first people on the ground in Iraq who said the surge just might work.
You can read him here:
http://www.michaelyon-online.com
He wrote about my daughters “home” while she was in Iraq here:
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/mortar-magnet.htm
He’s a self made journalist and being that he was a former Green Beret he actually does know about things military, unlike so many of the other “journalists”.
Her greatest misfortune is that she was born in a Muslim country and knows no other religion but Islam. There are millions of her kind.
The one thing that strikes me from all the “History of Afghanistan” texts - is the term “Internal fighting” - tribalism.. Tribalism was a major problem in the 1700s - and is a problem today.
I won't pretend to know the answer to the current problems.
I do know that nobody really owns or controls the plains of Afghanistan - you can only rent the country and as the Brits learned, the payment is made in blood.
And the Soviets...
A right pretty lady.
Agreed.
***I write these words from Ghor province, and it’s like the Jurassic Park in Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul, Nangahar ... keep going. A person can tool around in towns like Kabul, Jalalabad or Mazar-i-Sharif and build up hopes, but to extrapolate beyond the tangible is folly. Iraq is 1,000 years more advanced than Afghanistan.***
More like 3,000. Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilization (pre Mohammed of course). Afghanistan is like the hill people in Tennessee, only with less teeth, less education and more guns.
***I recall when we first went into Afghanistan, the media stooges did some human interest pieces on the Afghans, including a feature on their “national sport” of riding horses around in the dust swinging a dead goat at each other.***
In buzkashi, the goat or calf had to be beheaded or the contest didn’t count. And they had to get it over the goal line. See? A little piece, however trivial, of British civilization.
Thank you for that wonderfully crafted post
***Thank you for that wonderfully crafted post***
Oh, sorry. And fewer guitars. My omission.
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