[PilotMan]

Re Afghanistan:

I really don't know why people are so up in arms about all this. Look, they had 20 years to figure it out, now, when the money and assistance walks away, are they pointing back and saying that we've done nothing and abandoned them. Look, in a country that essentially operated like a bunch of Sith Warlords, even in the 'legitimate' part that was set up, if you don't appease every corner all the time, they turn and cut you behind your back to seize power at the next level. That's the way that it was before 9/11 and that's how it'll be now. Mostly because the country is so isolated economically from the world that all leadership is based from the ground up. So if my corner doesn't like what the leadership at the top says, I reject it, then get a whole bunch of people to side with me and reject it, and then I claim my own leadership status until I'm deposed by someone else, and rinse and repeat forever. So after 20 years of trying to make inroads in that culture, and largely getting undercut by the Taliban and their foreign supporters we leave, and we leave the rest of them to the country that they wanted all along. The Taliban are more brutal and not afraid of using force to keep everyone in line, and while that's not terribly enlightened it's got to give Jon a huge boner. The country has the leaders and government that they always wanted, because if they wanted something else, someone else, or a legit group would have garnered enough support to make it happen with the billions that have flowed into the country.