[ While i supported Bush at the time i thought i understood what Afghanistan and Iraq were all about. I was wrong. I believed that we went to Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and hopefully catch Bin Laden, and Iraq to put a force powerful enough on Irans eastern and western border to surround them and contain them and foment insurrection and when the time was right invade and kill the ayatollahs. All of that was wishful thinking!!! Its clear we have leaders in both parties whos only concerns are personal and not the far reaching goals of a peaceful world. Ideas can be dangerous things, especially religious ideas that foment barbarous, murderous beliefs of moral superiority. ]
If we are fighting a backwards culture you always must go in like the fist of an angry god and just a quickly leave like a thief in the night....
That is the only damned thing these primitives understand and respect is forces of nature so we HAVE TO BECOME A RESPECTED FORCE OF NATURE!
Their view is the long view, the Nazis and other military's tried your methods and it didn't work, it doesn't work.
"Fractured by internal conflict and foreign intervention for centuries, Afghanistan made several tentative steps toward modernization in the mid-20th century. In the 1950s and 1960s, some of the biggest strides were made toward a more liberal and westernized lifestyle, while trying to maintain a respect for more conservative factions. Though officially a neutral nation, Afghanistan was courted and influenced by the U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold War, accepting Soviet machinery and weapons, and U.S. financial aid. This time was a brief, relatively peaceful era, when modern buildings were constructed in Kabul alongside older traditional mud structures, when burqas became optional for a time, and the country appeared to be on a path toward a more open, prosperous society. Progress was halted in the 1970s, as a series of bloody coups, invasions, and civil wars began, continuing to this day, reversing almost all of the steps toward modernization taken in the 50s and 60s."
"Afghanistan once had Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. In the 1950s and '60s, such programs were very similar to their counterparts in the United States, with students in elementary and middle schools learning about nature trails, camping and public safety. But scouting troops disappeared entirely after the Soviet invasions in the late 1970s."