Afghanistan: Pessoptimist · Global Voices
Ben Paarmann

Barnett Rubin, in his first post on a new blog about global affairs, says that being pessimistic about Afghanistan is not an intellectual challenge. Instead, Rubin (who was on the UN team during the Bonn conference a few years back) is a practicing “pessoptimist”: “Every morning we thank the Lord that he did not destroy Afghanistan during the night. And if harm befalls Afghanistan during the day, we thank the Lord it was not worse.”