Curtman Curtman:
We do that ourselves though, and hopefully Afghanistan will too some day sooner than that.
I hope they do too, but I think what Petraeus meant was that this kind of thing never really ends. Afghanistan may finally take care of itself but then there is always the next one. And while we fight and win the next one, Afghanistan could be right back to where it was. It's the nature of the beast.
It irks me when people use terms like "no end in sight" to try and cast our efforts as a futile light, because the same term could be applied to crime,disease, and any other of humanity's chronic problems.
"Damn, we still haven't cured cancer yet, there's no end in sight. Look at all the money wasted. All that money could have gone to something with more definate results, just pull the police out and be done with it."
As much as many people point out the many failures throughout history of foreign influence in that region, cultures can be changed, and saying it is impossible to change these people,is like saying the problem is genetic.
I said it when we first sent troops there, this kind of thing takes generations, and anyone who thought a couple of years would change the ways of an entire people was sorely mistaken.
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