So is the US doing the right thing in Afghanistan? I have been thinking about this alot lately. I am not convinced that we are. Why not? Well there are many reasons.

First, I am not about to say that the US is doing something wrong trying to kick Taliban ass. We are not. Their asses need kicking - desperately.

But what are we replacing the old Afghani government with? Remember, for your average Afghani, a country is a very different kind of entity then it is for an American. Here in the west, a country is some kind of unit. We believe that there is some kind of national entity with a center of power and a bureaucracy and an elected or chosen leader. We pay taxes to a centralized government, and there is one and only one army, and there is a foreign policy, with decisions that are made by a few people (in most cases with the mandate of a large percentage of the country).

In Afghanistan, the going conception of government is a rather fluid piece of land which is in some way controlled by the war lord de jure. Tax is paid to him. As much as he wants. there is no such thing as a foreign policy, or any policy whatsoever. The policy is help thine self.

Afghanis must see George Bush as the biggest and strongest warlord, and Americans see the Taliban and now Karzai as the latest leader of a genuine government. There waqs no government, not in the sense that an American would have recognized it.

A bigger problem is that we are trying to put a western style government on to Afghanistan. Worse, we are trying to install a democtratic type government. The Afghani people do not get this. To them it is just Karzai using the US to help him stay in power over the Taliban. Is that what Karzai is thinking too? Who knows?

What we need to do is set up a truly despotic regime in Afghanistan. Afghanis will understand that. Not that we want to be despotic, only that a government will not work if it is not like that. We need to rule it with an iron fist, and slowly introduce democratic reforms over the course of 15-25 years. We need to start by taking over the schools, and introducing democratic values (along side the Islamic stuff they learn). We need to import liberal, Western understanding, clerics (who understand the local language and culture) to teach and feed the children at the midrasas.

Then and only then can we introduce the notion of meaningful voting and other staples of modern government. Until then we are just starting something which we will not finish. We have a long history of dtarting to fix things and leaving too early. (eg, Somalia). To use a rather vulgar metaphor, we tend to pull out just before the other country reaches orgasm, and then she walks away as frustrated as she did when she started. The of course we get blamed for doing a half-assed job. We cannot keep on doing this. We have to make the tough choices. We need to see Afghanistan as an ally, not now, but in 30 years down the line. We can only do this if we get in for the long run with a plan for a gradual pullout, and serious economic and social reforms.

On the other hand it may not be possible or right to institute the kinds of cultural reforms that this requires. In which case we need to set up a pro American war lord who will do this himself.