These are the Pashtun tribesmen who are the primary recruits of the Taliban in fighting our troops.
After 10 years, they still have no idea why our troops came to Af-Pak.
Even the translators and police who work with us know almost nothing of 9/11 and what Bin Laden did.
Holding elections and telling them to go back to their mud huts and caves and things will be wonderful is ridiculous. Can someone explain this whole nation building thing to me again? [I posted this over at LP, thought I'd share it here as well.]
Couldn't you guys at least pretend you watched the video?
The point is that these Pashtun are so isolated and ignorant they have no idea what the Towers were, what al-Qaeda did, etc.
How can they ever vote meaningfully if they possess so little information?
You know, we had the old program from the Fifties to actually help Afghanistan, to transform these backward areas, to build dams to control flooding and make irrigation of these arid eastern Pashtun lands so they could have real agriculture, not just hardscabble opium farming. We have been in Afghanistan for many decades, other than the Soviet years of occupation.
It would cost a tiny fraction of what we are spending to conquer them if we would instead educate them about the world and let them choose their own future.
It would cost a tiny fraction of what we are spending to conquer them if we would instead educate them about the world and let them choose their own future.
OK, so I watch the darned video, TC.
I think it would cost an even tinier fraction to stay the hell out of places like that completely and eschew "educating" and "helping" folks who want none of it.
The Afghans may be astoundingly ignorant, but unfortunately we Americans are just stupid. Probably as stupid as the Russian people who could be conned into sending their sons into such hellholes to no discernible end except perhaps for lining the pocket of the usual suspects.