<So we're going to colonize Iraq, just as we colonized Afghanistan?>
You are looking at the superficialities, not the realities of power. Afghanistan has a government (sort of), a flag, an army (even more sort of), a currency, foreign embassies, and so on. All the formal attributes of a sovereign nation-state. But the reality of power, is that the provincial warlords hold 90% of the ground. And the "government" of Afghanistan holds the rest, only because foreign money and soldiers prop it up.
The most powerful person in Afghanistan today, is the U.S. ambassador (OK, maybe it's the CIA station chief). Just as, in pre-Nasser Egypt, the most powerful person was the British ambassador. There is a difference between colonialism and colonialism-by-proxy, but it's just a difference in appearances. |
