Too bad the leaders of this country continue to fail and understand history. It was said that our influence and money in Afghanistan, bankrupted the Soviets. And yet we think we can fix the mess we created. Perhaps the Russians now have the last laugh. My late partner was from Iran. The Afghani's speak Farsi but are very poor. The Iranians bring in the people from Afghanistan as their workers doing all the hard work Iranians won't do. Sound familiar. The problem with many poor countries is their fertility rates are higher than that from developed, richer countries. There can be no way to help unless those rates are brought way down.

We have not. The same thing was at play in Korea but at least there was a partial settlement. Still, our involvement in Iraq help strengthen ISIS and other radical Moslem groups. It made any kind of deal in Afghanistan almost impossible. I remember us getting into this mess because of the country's support of Bin Laden and refusing to give him up. It was not trying to settle a civil war.

After spending a month in Vietnam (with my Vietnamese sister-in-law) we got a different version of the war and why we should not have gotten involved. Just like the soviets we were trying to push our version of a certain government. I have also come to understand that the biggest threat to democracy is diversity and a large and growing population. More and different groups of people become harder and harder to manage.