Unlike most Americans I was not convinced that our invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 was a good idea. There is no question that we needed to dismantle the al-Qaeda training camps, and our distaste for the Islamist rule of the Taliban was understandable. Yet I was too familiar with the Soviet experience, especially their fierce and unending conflict with the very localized tribalism that this article discusses, to believe that a countrywide occupation could be successful. If we are to stay in Afghanistan, I believe we must define strictly limited objectives and leave the mountainous tribal villages to their own devices--even if this means al-Qaeda once again manages to establish training camps in the tribal areas. (BTW, I supported our invasion of Iraq to a greater degree, largely because I knew that during the 1980's the U.S. had provided Saddam with biological weapons starter kits that could be passed on to terrorist cells (http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html) . The WMD threat was real, though it was never nuclear.)