re: #284 marjoriemoon

And I was totally behind Bush and the war, though I thought Afghanistan was the better move. Actually, I don’t think we should leave either area.

At some point, that got to be weaned off our economic teat. Trying to make tribes act like a country is damn hard.
Tangential story:

When they first built the Fightin’ Texas Aggies campus, they didn’t put in any sidewalks. Soon enough, paths showed that showed where people *actually* waked as opposed to where the designers *thought* they might walk. Then they put in the sidewalks.

The point is that we can’t force a different ethos amongst a people who are so very unlike us socially and culturally. We’ve got to let them find their path to modernity, which may be very different from ours. And I certainly see no reason to continue to throw our young men and women into that meatgrinder in the name of “nation building”. We got the bad guy who masterminded the 9-11 attacks.

How much longer should we stay?