[ExI] riots again

[Charlie Stross]

On 4 Oct 2012, at 21:40, F. C. Moulton <moulton at moulton.com> wrote:

> On
> And the "many people" who thought that invading Afghanistan was a good
> idea have been shown to be wrong.  

I am suppressing groans of laughter. (Not the happy fun kind of laughter, mind you.)

The US foreign policy apparat has a bad case of "not invented here" where it comes to this sort of thing -- not just the state department, but the *entire* political framework that deals with the outside world.

It's as if *nobody at all* had studied the history of previous military interventions in Afghanistan. By which I'm not just talking about the Soviets; it's like nobody had heard of the Anglo-Afghan Wars, much less the grisly fate of General Elphinstone's Expedition during the 1842 Retreat from Kabul -- the worst defeat ever inflicted on the British Empire.

It's just an all-around Bad Place to Go. Always has been. Even Alexander the Great had second thoughts about trying to occupy Afghanistan.


-- Charlie