Chances are if you're reading this you've thought about becoming a home inspector. You may have even seen the ads that say you can make hundreds of dollars a day as a home inspector. Home inspection schools put many of these ads out. They paint a ros...

It also seems to me like the people of Afghanistan have been fighting superior armies on and off for hundreds of years and that the Taliban are a more integrated part of the culture there then some terrorist cell operating separate of popular opinion.

Although they have their roles to play tribes, the Red Cross, people with green eyes, and the Elks Club aren't states. They might have some characteristics in common with states but they aren't states largely because they don't behave like states.

Among the defining qualities of states are a defined border, at least a pro forma attempt at defending the border and keeping order within it, inclusivity (in the sense that, within the border, everyone has some relation to the state), and exclusivity (in the sense that, within the border, there's only one state).

Drawing a border and declaring it's a state isn't enough. There must be intent as well and it's rather clear that areas to which the arm of the national government just don't reach aren't part of that state when they don't intend to be part of that state. In Afghanistan the national government is for practical purposes the government of Kabul and the adjacent area. Wishing the rest of Afghanistan were a state or ever have been won't make it so.

Failed state? That's a misconception. To be a failed state you've got to have been a state. There's a swath of ungoverned territory that runs from eastern Turkey to the Hindu Kush parts of which are claimed by a dozen or more countries, none of which have established control over the territory they're claiming.

I guess that would depend on what you consider a state. the government which supposedly rules over the "swath of ungoverned territory" in Afghanistan is not the major playing piece in that region. It's the various tribes that occupy Afghanistan that rule it, and until a plan can be made around integrating them into the country's future, there will be progress.

This puppet rule in Afghanistan is partial at best, and Democracy doesn't work everywhere, there are certain political, social, economical and even cultural aspects which must be satisfied.

Take for example Iraq, where most of the people who were given free choice decided it best to use that freedom to kill each other.

Failed state? That's a misconception. To be a failed state you've got to have been a state. There's a swath of ungoverned territory that runs from eastern Turkey to the Hindu Kush parts of which are claimed by a dozen or more countries, none of which have established control over the territory they're claiming.

As I pointed out not long ago the problem in Afghanistan isn't just one of putting more troops there. Without a radical restructuring of the entire region there's no practical way of supplying such a force. The situation is more Fort Apache than Desert Storm.

Anybody there bring up the name "Pakistan" in any of these discussions?

Yup. Not a lot in yesterday's unveiling, which was fairly compressed, but certainly the reports talk about the need for a regional approach.

President George W. Bush
USS Abraham Lincoln
At Sea Off the Coast of San Diego, California
May 1, 2003

http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rm/20203.htm

Yea, "Mission Accomplished"