We do not exploit our greatest asset because they are Muslim, and Americans believe that all Muslims are traitors and terrorists. Our nation accordingly suffers from our moral shortcomings.

This pattern first emerged in Vietnam — not counting Japan after WWII, which is now falling apart, as well, as US geopolitical power in the region declines — and has been US political/military policy since.

It is a policy with “fatal flaws”, primarily because we try to change local customs by “Americanizing” them, instead of attempting to understand what is important TO THEM IN THEIR CULTURE.

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“A clear pattern emerged. When massive international efforts were made, real progress emerged. The provincial capital and other large towns in central Helmand grew more secure and thrived economically, and narcotics cultivation dropped by one-third.

In June 2004, accompanied by eight Afghan security guards, I drove into Lashkar Gah with Grader and found a bustling town of 100,000 people filled with shops and open-air markets. But the prosperity was illusory. The boom was largely fueled by Helmand’s opium trade, which by then had been spreading across the province for two and a half years since the fall of the Taliban.”

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I wonder how many Afghans would agree with you that their prosperity is “illusory”?

Your article IS a tragedy, but not only for the reasons you state, but for the fact that the US has learned NOTHING since Vietnam.

I want to add – the Afghans don’t have extensive educations or even general literacy and yet to adapt to modern techniques we expect them to become college educated with years of office or factory floor experience almost overnight?

I don’t understand why The USA insists on building North American housing types that are more suitable for countries with vast timber resources than they are for Middle Eastern countries that don’t have them.

The Egyptian architect, Hassan Fathy, wrote some excellent books on the advisability of adapting local materials and traditional skills to create affordable, well designed communities with limited need for modern building materials. The importation of building materials
is expensive for developing countries and ignores the resources they already have. It also harms their ability to create local support industries to meet their own employment needs, without going deep into debt, or having to construct large industrial facilities simply to provide homes and businesses for themselves.

The American way of life is more suitable for north America. And it is not at all sustainable. Americans no longer build with local materials and it is a pity. House type and construction techniques across the country could exist anywhere in the country and tend always to look alike. But the very thing that attracts visitors to historic areas is their tendency to reflect local materials, techniques and design motifs. All of that regional flavor became very expensive because of industrial scaled production and super scaled production.

Afghanistan has been building masonry structures for thousands of years and in a hot climate they make sense. It keeps the interior cool. American tract house development tends to ignore climate and substitutes mechanical HVAC equipment to the same job that narrow streets shaded by high wall building frontage, narrow alleys, limited window opens, shaded pergolas or arcades and layered spaces can do without the need for massive amounts of electrical power.

The USA has one of the most wasteful and bone headed ways of life on the planet. And we persist in exporting our very provincial notions to far older societies when, in fact, their traditional building techniques tend to represent the more sensible approach. Plumbing and modern sewerage systems would be an improvement in many places, no doubt, but the older societies could be encouraged to continue the use of craft traditions they already have and even to start to develop those for export too. It is always expensive to do any handwork in this country because machine production undercuts all of it and the buildings are becoming down right boring.

There are numerous ways to build decent and even beautiful buildings and homes that don’t automatically required 2×4′s or even poured reinforced concrete. Steel rebar is very expensive. They shouldn’t even be looking at industrial building products except for limited home grown applications.

I am very surprised the Bolivian cobblestone idea didn’t catch on unless it was a matter of trying to do that for major long distance roads? That is a very expensive surface treatment in this country and isn’t used except for high-end development projects. But they last forever and the blocks are always interchangeable and reusable.
It’s more suitable for older types of dense urban fabric.

It sounds very like the billions spend on Afghanistan was wasted as a inappropriate tour de force and as soon as the funding dries up, it will all wither and die.

Yet we continue to insist on doing things FOR these populations instead of letting them do things for themselves.

There has been a cultural change from the top down for the worse in ALL of the well meaning federal programs..

There has been a cultural change from the top down for the worse in ALL of the well meaning federal programs..