This seems far worse than Pakistani presidential ineptitude.

Can’t you hear them, when explaining away some barbaric practice in Muslim lands:

“Don’t you seeeeeeee……that’s the way they do things in that culture, which though “different” is in no way “inferior” to our empire-building, people-oppressing, planet-plundering Western civilization!!”

Riiiiiight!

Fellow Taliban terrorists blew the gate with explosives. Just about everyone’s gone. On point: Western patience with Karzai’s corrupt and ineffectual government nears an end. As usual, we have to strongly suspect that this “escape” was conducted wi…

It really astounds me that people forget Afghanistan is ten centuries in the past. We demand that they modernize to our standards but forget that it took our own ancestors over ten years to get a constitution enacted just over 200 years ago.

So our ancestors did it in ten years but the Afghans haven’t managed to do it ten centuries. That is astounding!

The alliance has begun to wonder whether they need another option besides Karzai to start seeing any improvement

Makes me recall JFK wondering whether he needed another option besides Ngo Dinh Diem to start seeing any improvement. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Oh, silly me, it doesn’t exist. Although some are dillusional enough to think the power is out there, and the problem is we are using the wrong dosage or mixing up the ingridients.

Of course, should Obama win election, this is going to produce an interesting situation for him and Congressional Democrats come 2009 — They’ve spent the better part of five years wailing that we never should have invaded Iraq, and should have put all our resources into fighting al Qaida and bin Laden in Afghanistan. If Karzi fails to turn things around by next spring, Obama would be faced with living up to his rhetoric, and pulling out of a calm Iraq while going more heavily into an unstable Afghanistan, or back out there, too, and risk both being called on his hypocracy by Republicans, and (more importantly) been seen as weak by Islamic terrorists even moreso than Bill Clinton was in the 1990s.

Afghanistan is the “good war”, after all.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda need help dying.

Step up, Europe.

We give the aid but they must work with more of our provincial type reconstruction teams to teach the Afghans how to build out their infrastructure by being mentored like we now do in Iraq.

The mistake a few years back was to just expect the Iraqi’s to run their country with minimal training. We must work with them and send our experts in budget execution just like Iraq to help them get over the hump.

Afghanistan has been a third world country with mostly mud huts and very little education of its people.

Its going to take time. If we are not happy with their progress then we need to do a better job of providing security and mentoring.

Good looking Canadian Honour Guard there ;)

Maybe the two of them could get together and have a little chit-chat. Just a thought.

Best bet is probably to continue suppressing the Taliban, under whose influence Afghanistan would remain frozen in the 10th century and a breeding ground for international Islamofascist terrorism; pursue development and exploitation of oil/gas and mineral resources; and turn the extensive poppy cultivation into a world resource for medical and commercial use, instead of into the black market for drugs.

People also forget how dangerous it is to attempt to govern in a country full of tribal rivalries and really nasty terrorists. I assume it’s hard to get Western businesses and NGOs in to help, because of the constant danger.

platypus on June 13, 2008 at 8:02 AM

The one thing I would add to your analogy is that I would make the Chimps blind.

The extreme tribalism which exists in Afghanistan makes it almost impossible for the current generation to successfully maintain and prosper a democratic government. The best hope is to just get the current generation to survive long enough to create a new generation and give that one hope for true advancement.

Maybe America should learn something.

And they weren’t behind the rest of the world.

All these impatient people should be assigned to teach calculus to chimpanzees while being berated and threatened daily for failing to produce a monkey professor in less than a year.

Maybe then they would understand life.