Video of Afghan fighters being inteviewed in their training camp at the link.

why should they? they see themselves as the strong horse, and Bambi’s in the White House.

should=shouldn’t

there’s no WILL to destroy the opium crops-many techniques to do so exist.

I don't think the US should be nation-building anywhere but in the USA. For myriad reasons.

But I especially oppose so-called "nation-building" in Afghanistan, because you have to create an anti-Taliban network of bribe-taking tribal leaders, deal-making artillery-smuggling warlords, internationally-connected opium-growers and boy-raping criminals, who will stay on "our side" only as long has they can continue their filthy access to cash, weapons, drugs, and sex.

I almost want to say, "Let the Taliban kill them all. And then take out the Taliban."

See the following excerpts from KevinJones' blog on our boy-raping Afghani "allies":

When the N.Y. Times called indifference to child sex abuse ‘heartwarming’…

... [University of Chicago anthropology professor Richard Schweder] recounts anthropologist Montgomery McFate’s efforts to help the U.S. military understand the cultures of Afghanistan. Citing an NPR news show story, Schweder adds:

"Nevertheless the military voices on the show had their winning moments, sounding like old-fashioned relativists, whose basic mission in life was to counter ethnocentrism and disarm those possessed by a strident sense of group superiority. Ms. McFate stressed her success at getting American soldiers to stop making moral judgments about a local Afghan cultural practice in which older men go off with younger boys on “love Thursdays” and do some “hanky-panky.” “Stop imposing your values on others,” was the message for the American soldiers. She was way beyond “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and I found it heartwarming. '

Prof. Schweder’s nauseating, flippant attitude should not distract from the very real threats facing young boys in Afghanistan.

In June 2008 allegations began surfacing that Afghan security forces were sexually abusing young boys at Canadian bases in Afghanistan. Soldiers and chaplains told military commanders of the incidents.

According to the Ottawa Citizen’s Sept. 21, 2009 story “Sex abuse and silence exposed,”[4] in 2008 Brig. General J.C. Collin, commander of Land Force Central Area, “passed on to the senior army leadership the concerns raised by military police who said they had been told by their commanders not to interfere in incidents in which Afghan forces were having sex with children.”

One reputed witness is former Cpl. Travis Schouten. According to the Toronto Star:

He says he was told by an Afghan translator about "Man Sex Thursday," a weekly routine in which Afghan soldiers, police and translators sexually abused young boys. Schouten is overwhelmed by guilt for not having intervened when he heard what he believes were the cries of boys being sexually assaulted, sounds he says were corroborated when he later saw a young boy, barely alive, with signs of rape trauma.[5]

The trauma was such that (this is not for the squeamish) the boy’s bowels had fallen out of his body. Cpl. Schouten himself suffers from post-traumatic stress.

“We allow rampant abuse of young boys at the hands of what is supposed to be their finest police officers and army officers, then what does that say?” the soldier told the Ottawa Citizen in 2009. [6]

That report continues, saying Defence Department records show military police were upset about such incidents but were told not to interfere. Army officers’ 2007 discussions of the issue had as their main concern that “the media would somehow find out.”

Another soldier told Canwest News Service that soldiers were informed the practice involved “consenting Afghans,” no one was raped, and the children involved were “given small gifts or money in return for sex.” Perhaps academic anthropology explained it all away.

For his part, Schouten rightly doubts the ability of six- to eleven-year-olds to consent. One of his translators apparently told Schouten how he enjoys the violent practice and also uses a knife on the youths.

Schouten’s words are a rebuke to Prof. Schweder:

“The Canadian Forces wants people to think it’s a cultural thing, that everyone is doing it, because it takes the onus of responsibility off them to stop it.”

“I do feel people should be held accountable and people should know this is what is going on over there,” he told the Ottawa Citizen.

And the New York Times’ response to these claims of cover-ups? A search on “Schouten” reveals no results. The Canadian charges are not on its radar.

In 2002 the Times did inform us that although the “puritanical” Taliban “tried hard to erase pedophilia… now that the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is gone, some people here are indulging in it once again.” [7]

The Times reporter interviewed 19-year-old Ahmed Fareed, who at the age of 12 was taken into a pedophiliac relationship with a 22-year-old. The piece concludes:

…he insisted that he does not regret being lured into a relationship by his older friend. When asked if he would do the same to a young boy, Mr. Fareed said, yes.

''I'm looking for one now,'' he said with a smile.

http://kevinjjones.blogspot.com/2010/07/when-ny-times-called-indifference-to.html

The White Man’s Burden

I do like Kipling, but in context I don't know what you are specifically calling the White Man's Burden: Afghan nation-building? Or the suppression of the sexual abuse of boys?

In either case, we (USA) seem to be in transition from being part of the solution, to being part of the problem.

Both actually.

On one hand, In today's zeitgeist we find ourselves enamoured by the concept of multiculturalism and the perceived nobility of the savage and yet on the other hand we possess an innate moral sense of right and wrong that these unwashed heathen savages lack.

Either we lord over them or let them be.

I'm of the opinion that Coulter was right.

I'm all for that "innate sense of right and wrong," but find it more than ominous that sodomy is not only a common custom in Afghanistan amongst the "unwashed heather," but a "recognized, Constitutional" right in the USA; and the public subsidization of sodomy is well on its way to being an accomplished fact. Kagan looks like she'll be confirmed, damn the Rats and RINOs. And then normalcy ("heteronormativity,") will become a suspect, quasi-criminal category.

Think of this: the founders of our nation believed that there were truths that were "self-evident," rights that were "inalienable" and granted by the Creator, and certain basic political principles were called for by "Nature and Nature's God." All of these phrases are explicit in the Declaration, and all are references to Natural Law.

Yet it was on suspicion that Robert Bork had an ear open to Natural Law, that Bork got Borked.

And now we'll have Kagan, who believes neither in nature nor in nature's God, but only is naked judicial diktat.