Beagle:

I agree with you 100% on the nature of those cultures. But here is where the arguments go circular: these places don’t work as they are, yet they don’t seem to work as we might imagine them. They seem to make choices that are baffling to us; their notions of ‘self-interest’ are light years away from your and mine.

At some point, America needs to ask itself how much effort we should put in for these people. Look at how happy the Iraqi’s are with our help. Oddly, Hussein was the sort of guy who kept a lid on the some of sort of thing going on in Pstan. There were reasons that we supported Saddam, back in the day – at least he wasn’t a religious nut (just a sadist). The Christians and the few odd jews they had in Iraq have just been trashed since Saddam was removed.

Many options. All bad. Sigh. Maybe we should have left Mosaddeq alone in 1953…