re: #391 WindUpBird

The Clinton/Obama primary was like the super bowl to me. I don’t really watch sports, I have politics for that! :D

This last weekend I spoke to an old friend who just returned from another rotation in Afghanistan and your sports comparison reminds me of a conversation we had.

He likened the tribalism among Afghanis and their continued efforts to “shoot the guys over in the next valley” to the NFL.

“And when winter comes, the season is over.”

This was all in the context of “what can we expect from Afghanistan”. His opinion is that we won’t be seeing any sort of stabilization like that in Iraq. No common memory of a middle class or of any modern infrastructure. Instead, for most Afghanis the world is the size of a valley and what is in the next valley must be dealt with. Islam doesn’t really play a part, and the armed guys flying in from around the world to report for either jihad or liberation can be put into service to protect the valley from the outsiders.

And there are a hell of a lot of valleys.