We’re very good at saying we want to create a gender-sensitive, multiethnic centralized government based on human rights, policy, and law. But we’re very bad at deciding at what cost and in what time frame. Are we prepared to empower a provincial warlord to keep security for five years while we get our act together? Are we prepared to allow drug cultivation to continue because we’re focused on counterterrorism? Are we prepared to say that what matters most in the early stages is economic development, not democracy, and so we might tolerate a more dictatorial system that will create economic stability? Well, we’re not prepared to do any of those things—we want it all now. And, as a result, we generally end up getting none of it.
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