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.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)