Pournelle used to refer to the president of Afghanistan as “the mayor of Kabul”. Apparently he understood the country better that our military and foreign policy elites.
One of the guys on talk radio a few years ago was explaining how Europe ‘occupied’ territories in the Middle East hundreds of years ago, which is no different than the way we ‘occupied’ Iraq and Afghanistan. They’d basically be clustered together in a dozen forts and would only go outside of these forts for short periods (highly armed), or when traveling between these forts, no different than us in Afghanistan. Compare that to how we occupied Japan and Europe after WW2, and to this day, where our soldiers can safely go anywhere in the those countries when they want.
There was a term for that type of ‘occupation’ in the Middle East, but I don’t remember it.
Who is Pournelle?