eddymerckx wrote: Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:53 am
Came as bullies, left as cowards. Nice one, Joe.
Bullshit. How about "Came as naive optimists, left as exhausted realists. Thank you, Joe, for being the one willing to finish off this half-eaten shit sandwich."
The US came into this country with the naive expectation that they were going to remake the place the same way they did Europe and east Asia after WWII. The naivete, of course, is that those places were nations, organized by secular rule-of-law and social contract. Easy peasy.
It was just plain stupid to think anyone can bring that to a nation of tribal warlords governed loosely by religious law and inter-tribal relationships. The literacy rate amongst adult men is only something like 5%. How can anyone expect to set up a secular government based upon rule-of-law when 90% of the adult population can't even fucking read? They would have been just as successful trying to train a standing national army of grey squirrels or macaques for fucksakes.
That foreign policy error that big-N 'Nations' need to stop making is to recognize that there are still places on earth that are not quite 'civilized' in the way that allows 'our' governmental systems to be exported with any sliver of success. And 'our' job is to stay the fuck out. Period.
If there is an absolute need to piss away taxpayer money on Sisyphean tasks, we might as well doing it trying to train squirrels and macaques to form secular republics and standing armies. At least it will prevent the tide of human misery that was unleashed over the previous 20 years.