Time to Leave Afghanistan

Editor,

Shoe-horning Afghanistan into the American right's vision of how a nation and an economy should be structured is a fool's errand and in fact is not even a worthy enterprise in principle.

And militarizing the political landscape there serves no interests but those of the militaristic right in the U.S.A. while incidentally making the problem of anti-American extremism worse.

So it is time to leave Afghanistan, as all foreign invaders who have preceded us there have left, and, leaving the ambition of American corporations to rule the world aside, the question of what the West could do to be viewed favorably in the Pashtun lands should be asked anew of all interested parties so that perhaps an answer can be found.

re: "Afghanistan on Fire" (8/20/2008)