The Failure of Nation/Culture Building in Afghanistan

For my final post of the day, I want to excerpt Justin Raimondo's piece on Afghanistan. As you'll see, he is echoing a recent statement by Zbig Brzezinski (sp?) that America may be moving down the same path the Soviets trod in Afghanistan:

When you look at it, our war aims in Afghanistan are virtually identical to
the Soviets’ – and one would think we’d learn some lessons from their utter
failure (and subsequent rapid decline). Like the Kremlin, circa 1980, we are
pledged to build a strong central Afghan government, one that has gained the
allegiance –or, at least, the passive compliance – of the people. Our intent,
like theirs, is to "reform," i.e., modernize Afghan society, at least to some
extent, a goal that seems to elude us as much as it did the People’s Democratic
Party of Afghanistan and their Red Army allies. The Afghan people, it seems,
want no part of modernity, either the Marxist version or its Euro-American
doppelganger, and all attempts to impose it by force are doomed to fail
spectacularly.