Back in 2001, I supported our efforts to eradicate Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. Then we decided to conduct "nation-building" where no real nation-state existed before.
Andrew McCarthy effectively advocates for not "staying the course" in this NRO article.
Mark Steyn tosses-in his "2 shillings" from The Corner.
And Philip Ewing paints this dismal picture of on-going "green on blue" attacks in this article of Military.com
One friend sent me this article from Thomas Friedman of the NYT, along with the following comments:
Good article. Here's another one from Friedman...I'm amused he has the temerity to build on VDH. As usual, Tom's conclusion is half-baked and demonstrably wrong -- eliminating poverty and illiteracy are not going to fix the Middle East.
This led to a short discussion:
My conclusion is that you’d just have more literate and articulate anti-semites/west haters.
Education and economics are not panaceae for their problems. For example, the 9/11 hijackers were almost universally wealthy (or at least middle class) and were quite educated - didn't seem to dissuade them. There are tons of studies that show that terrorism is NOT tied to poverty (otherwise, Africa would be a torrent of terrorism). Friedman seems to fall in the Fukuyama camp - if they only knew the fruits of Western-driven globalization, they would jump onboard and be happy members of the global village. Yeah, right. That thinking is going to get a lot more people killed as we cotinue down the happy path of history...
Yeah, definately time to bail on this God-forsaken country.
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