Afghanistan's Golden Age

An interesting piece in the New York Times (by way of Chapati Mystery) on Afghanistan's (none too distant) "golden age", although I remain somewhat reticent about such rhetoric, because it can easily be used to deflect arguments against increased intervention by outside powers -- although the argument never seems to prevent involvement in any but the most humanitarian conflicts (Balkan Ghosts, anyone?). That is, it's an argument that might be deployed in Year 8 of a war, not Year 0.

Nevertheless, because it helps disturb the sanguine (and maddeningly superficial) view of Afghanistan as a country that one can 't do anything about, as a land, discussions about which are bookended by phrases like "imperial graveyard" and "fiercely ungovernable", the piece is welcome. The evocative photographs don't hurt either.