by Sam Roggeveen
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15 July 2010 1:09PM
Just in case you missed it, I want to highlight the closing paragraph of this post from guest blogger Jason Thomas:
If you are not a military strategist or a new-age counterinsurgency warrior and can't work out why the war in Afghanistan is taking so long, look in the backyard of your own communities and ask yourself why gang intimidation, drug trafficking and violent crime haven't been cleaned up; the answer is fundamentally the same. The truth is, defeating an insurgency requires a massive social re-engineering and a rebuilding of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Except in Afghanistan, we are trying to do it for a whole country.
To reinforce this point, check out the evidence Anthony Cordesman from the CSIS has assembled on the huge mountain the coalition needs to climb to 'nation-build' Afghanistan.
It takes generations to achieve better social outcomes in our own neglected communities. What makes us think we can do it for an entire country that we know barely anything about? It almost defies belief to think we are collectively pursuing a policy that is so plainly unachievable.
