From: ikonoqlast@gmail.com

On Wednesday, July 30, 2014 12:25:26 PM UTC-7, J.Pascal wrote:


> Other than that, and to get political when maybe that's a bad idea... one
can not *restore* what never existed.  


This is actually pretty important, and something the top tier of US policy
makers don't get.  They look at the success of Reconstruction and post WWII
rebuilding of Japan and Germany into successful states and think "let's do
that in place X"

Uh, Japan and Germany and the South were successful and reasonably well run
BEFORE the war, all we did was tweak them a little and allow rebuilding.  

Afghanistan?  Never been anything but what it is now.  Changing it is
effectively impossible on less than a many-decade scale and would require full
on colonization.

Iraq?  You have to go into ancient history before you get something
worthwhile.  Iraq COULD have been built into a successful state on a much
shorter time scale than Afghanistan, but it would still take decades and overt
colonization.  And of course Iraq 
isn't a nation, just a geographic area bounded by an arbitrary line drawn on a
map and including groups that don't like each other and won't cooperate.

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