The United Nations reported this week that Afghanistan ranks second worst in the world for human development. It also ranks as the fifth-most-corrupt country, according to Transparency International, the Berlin-based organization that tracks such things.
This, then, is the country we are trying to save from itself, although really for ourselves. The United States and various other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries (plus more recently Australia and New Zealand) have been in this postmedieval country for eight years, without having figured out how to stop the violence and corruption, perhaps because Afghanistan was violent and corrupt for a long, long time before we arrived.
