From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Nov 09 2001 - 15:18:20 MST
George W. Bush says he isn't interested in "nation-building". I read this
to mean that after the war, Afghanistan will be left to become a rotting
hellhole that will shortly fall prey to yet another religious warlord.
Nation-building is the only strategy that ever worked for America. It is
only natural to suppose that America will never use it again. The only
hope for the Afghani is that the war drags on until 2005 and we get a
better President.
If it were up to me, I'd say go in with the troops and rebuild
Afghanistan. Lay down roads. Cart in modular housing and erect it as
fast as possible. Build factories. Build farms full of easy-to-operate
modernized farming equipment. I don't think we could transform it into a
First World country overnight, that takes an educated populace, but - if
only we were interested in nation-building - we could just build a new
nation where Afghanistan used to be, and the Afghan military forces
certainly couldn't stop us. It would at least be worth trying.
Sigh. Don't you wish McCain was in office right now?
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:11:54 MST