Quote of the Day: Charles Haywood, December 7, 2017

Afghanistan is not worth the bones of single Nebraskan private.  We should let the Afghans rot.  My guess is that most Afghans want today what they wanted in 330 B.C., when Alexander the Great rolled through.  They want to be left alone, to live their life as they see fit.  True, they live their lives in a crappy manner, and their culture is extremely defective in myriad ways, even if not infrequently individual Afghans display strong virtue, usually of the martial type.  For the most part, Afghan cultural defects have nothing to do with their failure to buy into modern liberal democracy, which is what we offer them and in which they have no interest, and everything to do with them being a mountainous (and thus insular), poor, tribal culture not blessed by Christianity and the (pre-modern version of) Western culture it created.  But that they live in in a crappy way is not our problem to be concerned about.  Most Afghans support the Taliban. …I bet the number of Afghans who want truly democracy or any aspect of Western culture, good or bad, can be counted on one hand.  Why we should be involved in any of this is beyond me.

— Charles Haywood, The Worthy House, Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor (Clinton Romesha).