Afghans Optimistic About the Future
Why isn’t good news like this played repeatedly over the airwaves instead of car bombings?:
Four years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghans express both vast support for the changes that have shaken their country and remarkable optimism for the future, despite the deep challenges they face in economic opportunity, security and basic services alike.
Yet despite these and other deprivations, 77 percent of Afghans say their country is headed in the right direction — compared with 30 percent in the vastly better-off United States. Ninety-one percent prefer the current Afghan government to the Taliban regime, and 87 percent call the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban good for their country. Osama bin Laden, for his part, is as unpopular as the Taliban; nine in 10 view him unfavorably.
Progress fuels these views: Despite the country’s continued problems, 85 percent of Afghans say living conditions there are better now than they were under the Taliban. Eighty percent cite improved freedom to express political views. And 75 percent say their security from crime and violence has improved as well. After decades of oppression and war, many Afghans see a better life.
This is amazing progress in Afghanistan yet no one knows about it. Yet everyone knows about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. Has it ever occurred to anyone that maybe the fact that these Al Qaida terrorists are sitting in these secret CIA prisons is the reason why the people of Afghanistan have such a positive outlook of their own future and the United States effort to give them this future?
