Development?

Poor schooling slows anti-terrorism effort in Pakistan - washingtonpost.com: "With a curriculum that glorifies violence in the name of Islam and ignores basic history, science and math, Pakistan's public education system has become a major barrier to U.S. efforts to defeat extremist groups here, U.S. and Pakistani officials say."

Der Spiegel writes about a situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan that might be "spiralling out of control". The article in general, however, is up-beat in character since it advocates that military should withdraw from Afghanistan.

Well, one of the key problems in AfPak must be that there is recruitment to the enemy from from a pool of 30+170 million people. Therefore the problem and the amount of casualties have increased every year for all the nine years. Even if it is not possible to affect this recruitment on the timescale people generally dwell on for the AfPak discussion future regional stability will be affected. The fastest way of affecting recruitment might be to remove foreign troops.

The conclusion a person with average intelligence must draw from articles like those above is that the "battle" is already lost and what is interesting now is what happens next. How will this region of Western resistance affect the big picture in the future? Will the situation really get worse if no meddling in the affairs of these good people will remain?

I guess what I'm asking is what would happen if the West are not really able to indoctrinate, or otherwise convince, people in the Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan about the splendor of our civilization. Will they go on and live their lives or will they mobilize to conquer the West? My feeling is that they would rather stay by themselves. Europe in particular would be able to peacefully interact with these regions given our large immigrant populations.

These problems are epitomized with the discussion of whether or not Iran should be bombed to releave the threat of a nuclear armed Iran. The Economist have had that debate recently and there is a majority of 71% that don't think one should bomb. That means that a whole 29% actually think that one should go along and bomb a country quite extensively. 29% is furthermore up from 18% in a US poll half a year ago. However, you would not only attack Iran but also in principle all these other countries. Too big a deal and therefore not practical.

People are gathered in Sweden currently to discuss the defence of Sweden. Leaving the Muslim band alone could, if people there would be unwise, mean that Muslims in Europe rose in sympathy and millions of people migrated over to Europe and conquered her in what may sound like a Sverigedemocratic nightmare. In my humble opinion this is not really likely. Are we then afraid of battalions of suicide bombers? Probably not if there wasn't the irritation of foreign troops on their soil.

The situation in Afghanistan shows that the balance necessary for a reasonable discussion on how to proceed is not favorable. There is no meeting of the minds. Saddam Hussein caused the situation by his destabilizing activities. We need to reach for a new situation where the discussion can begin in earnest. We now that our civilization has its charms but they have no effect when propagated by superior looking military personnel.

Before we discuss if we want to be part of NATO or if the EU should act we need to now how we feel about the threat from this region from which we currently have quite a lot of foreign born people in our country. How many Swedes want to bomb Iran? We have not even disclosed this pertinent fact.