Dayuhan,

I agree that "we" and "our" are problems. It would be great if Karzai would do this of his own volition. Perhaps if we stopped protecting him and began to draw down next year as the President originally established he would. Our problem is that we have inflated fears of inflated problems of what might happen if he does not.

I also agree that this is a winner take all culture. We work with the old Soviet team. So it goes in this country, one side prevails and establishes control of the government and all of the money making key terrain (border crossing sites, irrigated farmland, trade routes, etc) and the other team is pushed aside.

How does one overcome self-destructive culture? How does one create trust and proper behavior in a culture where there is neither? By bringing all the parties together, the winners AND the losers, and crafting a constitution that creates guarantees and obstacles to the abuses that naturally occur. Where we screwed up is that we put too much faith in Karzai and allowed him and his team to craft a constitution that actually codified the historic system of abuse and exclusion and made it worse.

I think we need to tear down the sanctuary we have created around GIRoA and force the issue of bringing the parties together, scrapping the current abomination of a constitution, and starting over. Pakistan will see an opportunity in this to reestablish an acceptable degree of influence, so they should go along. The Pashtuns will see an opportunity to regain what they see as their rightful role in this society (and the Taliban will likely someday be little more than a political party once legal politics become effective and illegal politics are no longer the only option for change).

Our challenge will be to establish and maintain the right degree of invasiveness. Always tricky, and not something Americans have shown much flare for. We lack the patience and are far too sure of the rightness of how we see things (yes, I am an American). We need to just create the environment that brings them together, the force to make them come together, and the broad guidelines of what a constitution is supposed to do; and then allow them to self-determine what that all then produces.

Or go home. Pick one, but to stay and attempt to prop up an unsustainable model is not smart, and is not apt to produce any kind of good or enduring result.

Cheers,

Bob