Great report, even if depressing. This was something like the Heritage Foundation talks that are held in D.C. on a semi-regular basis?
When you think about it, Afghanistan represents the state of humanity for 99.99% of its history. The fact that we are not all in that situation is the remarkable thing. As far as we can tell, only one civilisation independently broke out of tribalism and despotism and gave primacy to reason and debate. One amoungst thousands. What if that one had been destroyed before its influence could take hold in neighbouring areas? We'd all be Afghanistan.
It was just a lunch among friends --all of whom happened to be notable cold warriors. And I'm the daughter of one, which is how we came to be there.
Brett, your comment reminds me of a wonderful line from the movie Black Robe, loosely about the Jesuit North American martyrs. After mass (in France) celebrated by a French priest whose ears and fingers were cut off by Indians in the New World, someone makes some scathing remark about the "barbarians." And the priest replies, "so were we all: French, Germans, English. Barbarians until we heard the Gospel."
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