I'm just waiting for Bush to say that no one in his administration saw the collapse of Afghanistan coming ...

Or for that matter, the rise of the Taliban once again (since Bush didn't follow through on getting Bin Laden and helping the Afghan people).

On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if the Bush administration just ignores Afghanistan.

Is the pipeline in place? Then things are fine. Pre-9/11/01 the entire world knew that the US intended to replace the Afghan government. One false flag operation and Dubya got the green light he wanted to basically stick our big military dick anywhere he felt like.

Is there a Vegas line on how many minute Karzai would live once his private-US-goon-squad security guards are gone..? Love the hat, btw.

Ask the Brits or the Russians how their Afghan occupations went... there was a simple, stark lesson there the US refused to pay any attention to...

What about the 3000 British troops being deployed to the south eastern Helmand province?

Where is the equivalent “Marshal” plan for Afghanistan and Iraq? That plan was about US subsidized “self” help. It wasn’t about throwing a lot of money at a bunch of foreign contractors. It was about eliciting the passions of the people themselves to rebuild their countries and providing to them what they needed to do so. The US GIs on the ground during the post war occupation were remembered as ‘good guys’ and a generation of Europeans grew up with a deep respect for the United States.

There are really no words to express how sad it is that this country has lived in abject poverty and anarchy for the last several decades. When you read books like the Kiterunner and realize that at one point Afghanistan was a mildly prosperous country it's almost hard to believe all that could fade away so quickly.

When we occupied Germany and Japan during WWII we ended up creating prosperity and stability. Sure it wasn't all wine and roses throughout those occupations, but those countries now enjoy prosperity far beyond the level that they did pre-war.

Can we at least give the people in Afghanistan and Iraq some semblance of organized civilization? What was the plan for occupying Afghanistan and Iraq? Was there a plan? Where is the George Marshall of today? It's not Condi Rice that's for sure and Bush is certainly no Truman.

The US did not make Japan and Germany rich. Let's assume the marshall plan worked (there's alot of debate about whether that plan really did anything). It was still up to the people themselves to act in certain ways. the US did not bestow good economies, democracy, and public order on those nations. they did it themselves. the Afghanis have never done it. they are recapitulating what has happened in their past. Anarchy, followed by tyranny, followed by anarchy and so on and on until the end of time.

Liberal thinking is based on a fundamental misconception which is that good things are bestowed upon people. the reality is people have certain values and the good things come out of the values (and of course all values have negative sides as well). First you have to have the values, then you create the good things. the afghanis, like much of the world, are not cooperative on boring tasks like making a business (everyone can cooperate when it comes to exciting things like rioting), they don't trust each other, they don't have standards of honesty that is necessary for successful trade to be widespread, in other words they are not bourgeois. they have their religion and their notions of honor. they don't have what it takes to make what we call civil society based on consensus. the US can do nothing about this.

Corruption is what really destroys nation building efforts. China under Chiang Kai-chek, Vietnam under any number of creeps and thungs and Iraq today are all examples of how corruption ruins societies. There is money there for major projects, but it all gets stolen and sent abroad to safe bank accounts. The failure to deliver basic services that results leads to disillusionment and then violence.

In a way you can't blame the people who steal the money. They are generally poor, see an opportunity to take care of their families and hey, if they don't steal it someone else will. I think that's one of the fundamental things about foreign aid that Americans do not understand. We live in wonderland and have no idea what desperate poverty is while its just a fact of life for most of the people in the world. Class tensions are something else that our generation of Americans don't feel nearly as keenly as our grandparents did, but class does still matter in these poor societies.

Some of the letters refer to Japan and Germany, when commenting on the failures in Afghanistan. Japan and Germany had very different cultures compared to the Middle East of today. The Japanese and German public were better educated and had a sense of nationalism and the ability to work as a team to accomplish a goal. Afghanistan reflects the culture of the middle east, the absence of education for the public and the loyalty to a tribe or religion rather than to a nation. Compound that with their lack of trust of the U.S. and unity and cooperation will not be easy. Bush told the new Iraq president that Americans keep their promises...well, just look at Afhanistan and you know it's another lie. Bush made a promise to the Afghans and he has not honored it. He has yet to learn that it's not what he says, but what he does that the world judges and responds to.

The Afghan plan, which I think most Americans support, was to go after the people who levelled the World Trade center and attacked the Pentagon when afghanistan's former rulers refused to help bring them to justice. Of course, it would be nice if Afghans took to the opportunity to create a better society for themselves with the help of the U.S. (and it would have been better for the U.S. kept all its nation-building eggs in one basket instead of heading over to Iraq in midstream), but that was a secondary motivation.