U.S. in Afghanistan

David Asednik disputes Robert Kaplan's assertion that the U.S. left Afghanistan essentially as it found it because it now has elections and women in the classroom. It's worth mentioning, however, that in much of the country there were women in the classroom before the Taliban, and there are still areas where they are not. You can't take the Taliban as Afghanistan's natural state which the U.S. distupted. All we did was remove that regime and put in place a new, more broadly based coalition of power brokers whom we're trying to push in a democratic direction. That said, I strongly disagree with Kaplan's view that Iraq is not fertile ground for a democracy. He's apparently forgotten the enthusiaism for local elections in summer 2003 which the U.S. thwarted to prevent people we didn't like from winning them.