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North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il Dead at 70
As reported by numerous sources, Kim Jong Il has died at the age of 70 (69 by some tallies), after 17 years as the brutal head of North Korea. While the cause of death is uncertain, Bloomberg News says "Kim probably had a stroke in August 2008 and may have also contracted pancreatic cancer, according to South Korean news reports."
Let us take this opportunity to thank the Dear Leader, who sacrificed his life for the socialist paradise.
Kim Jong Il is now Kim Jong Dead.
Do you know how fucking important this guy was?
"Kim probably had a stroke in August 2008 and may have also contracted pancreatic cancer, according to South Korean news reports."
The newspaper continued... "We aren't sure which blow dart hit him but it was probably both"
This is actually not a welcome event, the heir apparent is only 29 years old and hasn't really integrated himself into the communist party and army power structures. Compare that to his father who was 52 when Kim Il Sung died and had been filling various senior posts for at least a few decades by that point. A power struggle within the army/party could be bad as it could destabilize the country and/or convince the struggling powers to do something rash with the military in an attempt to curry favor. Guess we will have to wait and see.
Monstar L
North Korean State television Says Kim Jong Il died peacefully in his sleep while bowling a 300. (Via @NickGreene on Twitter)
Scott Swezey
World has now one asshole less.
Dude, this is so like 3 hours ago. I'm so over it like now already. yeah... so like wow.. whoa, late to the party all the time huh? nice shoes... where did you like ... buy them? buster brown?
Strike two against the Axis of Evil.
Anyone else fancy a game of Red Alert II in memory? :)
What a huge shame it is that Hitchens didn't live to see this, after a lifetime of opposition to everything that the mad midget of NK was...
Is there any news about what will happen to the country now? Who inherits his harems and little girl slaves? What about the fucking craziness? Will it be like Apple when Jobs kicked it: plenty of assholes left to fill the gap?
Still. It's a relief that this ego-maniacal bastard is finally dead, though it should have been long ago.
I'm so Ronery.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
South Korean currently living in London. Enjoying a beer and and grinning from ear to ear!
His epic 11 holes in one on his first round will be remembered for all time
Maybe if they didn't have nuclear weapons I wouldn't care so much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdug6yHJB40
There are not enough dictators left in Asia to keep the yellow man down. It's terrifying. Why hasn't the CIA made more they have the technology!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
God could not help out Tebow this afternoon, had bigger things on his plate.
china is pro NK so when you buy your apple stuff you are helping NK and helping them build nukes.
It is really that hard to figure out his BDAY?! 69! DAMN!
"That's right...I said it."
They're still censoring it, and everything else, because it's disrespectful to his glorious and immortal majesty.
Also because of the people who will be calling for a revolution to overthrow the new one.
Yes, I heard he was very Il.
Along with Bin Laden, Gaddafi, and Steve Jobs all inside a year.
The world is still not running out of assholes.
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2011 was a good year to dictators... what else can be said?
brutal head of North Korea
citation needed.
I don't really know that much about N.Korea, but from most image/video I've seen trickle out, it looks a good deal more upscale than the hyped to the hilt "next superpower" India.
I can only extrapolate that Manmohan Singh is a even more brutal head of India.
It's a pity Christopher Hitchens wasn't around to read about Kim Jong-Il's death.
I don't see anything even slightly technican here???
North Korea has announced that it has entered a period of formal mourning following the death of Kim Jong Il lasting from the 17th, the day of his passing, until the 29th.
The news was released in a brief communiqué in the name of the ‘State Funeral Committee’.
Chosun Central News Agency announced the news, stating, “The body of National Defense Commission Chairman Kim will lie in state at Kumsusan Memorial Palace during the period of mourning from the 17th to the 29th. Visitors will be received between the 20th and 27th. The ceremony for his parting will be performed on the 28th in Pyongyang.”
“Central memorial meetings to honor Chairman Kim will open on the 29th,” it went on. “At that time in Pyongyang and sites in every province there will be an artillery salute and 3 minutes silence, and all official vehicles and vessels will sound their horns.”
Second update: NK Borders Ordered Closed Before Death Announcement http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01700&num=8549
North Korean border guard units received orders at 1AM on the night of the 18th to close the border with China with immediate effect.
An inside military source told Daily NK this morning, “At 1AM on the night of the 18th a ‘Special Guard’ order was handed down to the unit. All officers who had finished work were recalled to the base and have been on emergency duty ever since.”
“At the time even commanding officers did not know about the contents of the order, and as per the order to completely close the border, normal patrols in groups of two were stepped up to groups of four. We only learned that the General had died from special broadcasts,” the source added.
Thus, it is clear that the North Korean authorities took steps to avert civilian unrest and potential mass defection attempts by shutting down the border and reinforcing patrols prior to announcing Kim’s death.
Third update: NK Shuts Down on News of Death http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=8552
Following the official announcement of Kim Jong Il's death today, North Korea has imposed rigid social controls, including the complete closure of markets.
An inside source told Daily NK this lunchtime, "The jangmadang is closed and people are not allowed to go outside. Local Party secretaries are issuing special commands through local Union of Democratic Women unit chairwomen, and the chairwomen have been gathered at district offices for emergency meetings."
According to the source, National Security Agency and People’s Safety Ministry agents have been deployed in streets and alleyways to control civilian movements. There have not been any signs of public unrest to date.
Kim Jong Il's sudden death has apparently caught people off-guard, the source revealed, commenting, "Nobody had the slightest idea about the General’s death even right before they saw the broadcast. You can hear the sound of wailing outside."
That news agency gets the majority of their info by cell phone conversation with North Koreans who live along the Chinese/Russian border, which is how we're able to get updates from the inside.
They would have a field day with this.
china is pro NK so when you buy your apple stuff you are helping NK and helping them build nukes.
Yes, every time you buy an Apple product made in China, a North Korean boils a kitten for dinner.
It seems to me that unless you are going to prop up such regimes indefinitely then you have to countenance the possibility of messy change at some point and absent any specific risks at a given point in time the sooner they better as dangerous technologies (such as nuclear) are almost certainly going to be more commonplace the longer you leave it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
This is considered news for nerds, but not the passing of Christopher Hitchens? Seriously?
I'm glad to see the man go, but I think Hitchens made more of an impact on this community than did Kim Jong-il.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
That is all.
You can't move a billion dollars without you kill somebody somewhere. The idea is to do least harm and most benefit.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I mean really, who cares about a malevolent dictator kicking the bucket ?
"Why do you think free speech is good for the humankind, overally?"
So then why are you engaging in free speech on this website?
How does this qualify as "News for nerds, stuff that matters"?
I didn't know that Kim Jong was ill. The only real worry is: how ballistic, how anal retentive, how crazy will N. Korea get, now that their 'guy' bit the big one. They have been know to go a little nutty before, but now what? Will the kid send the army into 'bezerker mode'? Its always a crap shoot with these guys. You never know exactly how insane they will become. Its like a big powerful machine that's lost some fundamental 'sanity' programming, and now acts in insane ways. Actually, they are acting exactly like all of the large corporations in the United States. Motivated by greedy self-interest, little regard for human life or consequences of their actions, not willing to listen to anyone outside, always threatening, always viewing people within as 'threats', with great suspicion. I heard that Czech Republic lost dissident, playwright and author of the velvet revolution Václav Havel. He was arrested after the "Prague Spring" in 1968, and arrested dozens of times between then and when he overthrew the communists in 1989. This made me sad. Kim Jong Ill? He inherited a totalitarian dictatorship. He lived a life free from want, while millions starved. "The Great Leader" was hemorrhoid free: he was a perfect ass hole.
Mohammar Khadaffi
Steve Jobs
Kim Jong Il
wait, I can't list them all...
!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2011_deaths
Rather talk about Vaclav Havel if we're talking about recent passing of leaders.
It's nice to have something to compare capitalist democracy to.
Good time to revisit Bobby Lee's parody : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBaPI2AKu2g and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu0bKgHhISQ
...the glorious Great Leader Kim Jong-Il sacrificed his life to the betterment of the great Democratic People's Republic of Korea? Actually, this kinda sucks in a selfish kind of way because I was hoping to eventually save up $3-4K to buy a touring package in North Korea during the Summer Games just so I can be one of the token few that's toured a Stalinist regime; now the country's gonna democratize & there'll be none left...
I hope for unification and rebirth for the Koreas as we haven't seen since the Germanies.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Too bad Jobs couldn't help them out with their engineering. Apple products actually work.
Have gnu, will travel.
So is it now time for Kim Jong III to take the throne?
Ill hear No Ill spoken of sans-serif fonts, thank you.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You can hear the sound of wailing outside.
You know, that's pretty fucking depressing. Not Kim's death, that's a reason to celebrate; but much like when Stalin died, it's really fucked to see the people actually, honestly mourning... Makes you wonder about a few things, doesn't it?
weinersmith
I hear a bunch of US soldiers have suddenly found themselves with time on their hands.
They stepped up border guards to make it look like, without Kim's glorious presence, they are more likely to be attacked. It will be used to justify more totalitarian action in the country.
Damn you and your pro-Apple propaganda! How did you know I hate cats?!
Under State Communism, the elite declare that they own as much as possible so the population are turned into desperate slaves. There are a dwindling few in the middle who insist that life is dandy under State Communism because they were intelligent, unscrupulous and obeisant enough to get ahead, and that "at least it's not like Western Capitalism" where people are left to wither. Man exploits man.
Under Western Capitalism, the elite declare that they own as much as possible so the population are turned into desperate slaves. There are a dwindling few in the middle who insist that life is dandy under Western Capitalism because they were intelligent, unscrupulous and obeisant enough to get ahead, and that "at least it's not like State Communism" where people are forced to work. Man exploits man.
At least when we see news reports about how great our country is/isn't we can go around and check to see how much the media is lying. We have to be very unchoosy in where we visit in order to get a full picture, and few of us are willing to do that - it takes time and is sometimes quite dangerous - but at least we can obtain some approximation. None of us know much about NK at all beyond obvious Western propaganda and occasional isolated reports. Yet we are much quicker to assume and to condemn than to campaign for more information. Isn't it so easy to say, "Guy X in Arabia/Asia is evil because I have a tweet saying so - let me retweet that and feel part of the neoliberation movement" ? Isn't it easy to assume that what occupies that power vacuum will be better - Mission has been Accomplished so many times over the past decade, hasn't it?
The saddest thing is that probably each and every citizen -- be them old, young, children, ill, healthy -- will have (as in obliged) to pay his or her visit to the funeral in order to say a last good bye, in a country with a terrible winter and where artificial heating is a luxury only available to the great members of the party. Perhaps even a little sadder is knowing that absolutely nothing will change, for his son has been trained since his early years to take on daddy's position and keep up with the realm of terror, not to mention that the old military leaders who were by KJI's side the whole time still remain.
The positive thing about his death to the citizens of North Korea is to show them that despite of what their government have been saying, their leaders are not deities nor special in any way, and are prone to die just like any other human. I wonder how his death is being explained to citizens -- perhaps they are being taught that the dearest leader ascended to the skies after fulfilling his role as a guide to humanity.
You see you made me . I made a couple of statements on occasion about not liking Apples version of attempted lock-in, not acknowledging Linux exist, and some really crappy security policies that only hurt their users. See, I used to have a Mac. I found out I couldn't use USB or Firewire drives for any "multi-media" work. Apple insisted that only the internal drive be used, the more expensive one that's harder to replace and the one I really didn't want to wear out.
Mentioning these very real and fair complaints got me moded down by fan boys every single time I made these non-trolling real remarks. I got the impression I was not allowed to make any disparaging statements about Apple no matter how slight, and I don't like being told what I can and can't do, especially when it's done by someone who has not earned my respect or a legitimate company or governmental superior position. Now I no longer have a Mac and I troll, because you made me and I can. I don't care if you share habitual offender and target remark information off-site so anyone with mod points can check the "fan boy alert" board so those with mod points know who to take out or not, I'm will continue to disparage Apple until the fan boys line up, apologize and admit to sharing targeting info, or until a good year or so passes without retaliation, one or the other, because you made me .
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First we lose the great and the good in Havel, now we lose Kim. Talk about yin yang....
I was just having a look at the *official" North Korean website and did a whois on it. Interestingly the domain was registered in Spain:
Registrant: ,43830
korea-dpr.com #29996
Alejandro Cao de benos de Les Perez (vientian@hotmail.com)
Calle President Companys 4-8
Torredembarra -Tarragona
ES
"don't like China because it is communist,"
Well there's a well thought out argument. FWIW china hasn't been communist for over a decade now - its actually the closest thing to a capitalist dictatorship the world has right now.
"and because they are working hard to steal American jobs, American tech, and they are working hard to dominate American interests."
Oh right, so the chinese forced american companies to outsource all their menufacture to china did they? It had nothing to do with greedy CEOs wanting to save a quick buck and screw whatever US jobs it cost or what knock-on effect it may have on the economy just so they could "raise shareholder value" - and coincidentaly collect a fat bonus for doing it did it? And same CEOs having outsourced blue collar work are not happily outsourcing white collar work to india. I suppose thats the indians fault is it?
You need to look closer to home for the reason china is in the ascendent. I would say the USA has economically shot itself in the foot but its actually closer to having blown its entire leg off.
the US doesn't have the best track record for placing people in power in foreign governments
The business of regime-change has raked billions of dollars through the business of government. At the top of the pyramid, it doesn't matter where the money comes from or where it goes. What matters is that it passes through your hands, giving you the opportunity to exploit that cash flow for personal gain.
You're not in the business of government, are you?
Oh, and by the way, please refer to the US government as the US government, not "the US" or "America". It is clear now more than ever that the people and the government are two very different entities.
How you like me now, Hans Blix?!?!
... but it didn't make any difference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSWN6Qj98Iw
Do any of them catch fire and sink into swamps?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Maybe I'm misunderstanding "120" and "millions"
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_die_from_starvation_each_year_in_America
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Well, to be fair Stalin was a brutal bastard who killed millions of his own people and enslaved more, but he did win the war, and he did transform Russia from a 3rd world country to an influential and powerful empire with huge military. So in a way it was possible to justify it all by saying all those people were sacrificed in the name of glory for the mother Russia. Even though same changes probably would had happened without Stalin, and with less gruesome deaths.
Now what "glorious" did the Kim Jong Il do, I don't know. Unlike his dad he didn't fight a war. His economic policies sucked. The power and influence of his country sucks. There just was no glory in any of it.
--Coder
Might one suppose that Kim Jong-Il might actually have been dead for a few weeks, instead of less than a day, and this is just the public announcement? It might explain Burma/Myanmar's sudden change of heart: they were fleeing the sinking ship.
(Not that I seriously believe this, but making up conspiracy theories is fun).
I'm really regretting posting earlier instead of moderating this discussion. A ridiculous bit of hyperbole with a preemptive ad hominem? No wonder you posted AC. Unfortunately, several idiots actually moderated you up, making me reconsider living on this planet anymore.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The man had a cult of personality, and this is what cults of personality do. The same happened for Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-Sung. It'll probably happen for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez too, when they die.
Yes, there is hunger in the US, but I have yet to hear of anyone here strving to death like they are in North Korea.
Free Martian Whores!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9Xy2InXXIkk
o_O
ignore me please
testing
Good riddance
More likely to physically demonstrate the continuity of a powerful government to the people, especially to those who may have been secretly waiting for the transition period to launch a revolt.
What makes you think it's honest, or that it's mourning for Kim Jong-Il?
In the absurdist documentary The Red Chapel, the director speculates that when their North Korean guide starts crying at the monument to Kim Il-Sung, she is actually crying for her relatives who died under his policies.
Not to be outdone by Jesus, we will learn that Kim Jong has " risen " from the grave a few days from now to continue leading his country. He will hereafter be known as the Enlightened Kim Jong II. :|
Even though same changes probably would had happened without Stalin, and with less gruesome deaths.
I'm very emphatically opposed to ideology that Stalin represented, but I'm not so sure that Soviet Union could win WW2 without his brutal policies. It's not even about his command during the war, which was basically very bad in the first year, then gradually improving as he learned his mistakes (unlike Hitler, who could never accept that he could be less than perfect in military planning). It's more about the whole rapid industrialization that he put the country through, at the expense of many lives - collectivization was done largely to supply the cities (that were driving industrialization) with food by robbing the peasants, and is largely responsible for Holodomor. The end result, however, was that by 1941, USSR could churn out rifles, tanks and aircraft at such speed that, even with a significant chunk of its productive territory occupied, it could out-produce Germany and thereby win the war. Without industrialization, Russia would remain an agrarian country, and would likely be easy victim during the war.
and his country for bringing us countless MMO's such as MapleStory and Lineage, and soap opera such as Dae Jang Geum.
Twitter: @dainsanefh
The US is going to come and kill our babies too (among other propaganda, no doubt).
But how can I donate to NK without buying shitty apple stuff?
Attribution bias is a core value in religious and political alignment. On the right: belief in The man or The Man (specifically The man claiming to represent The Man). On the left: the Buddist concept of the great oneness. On the far left: git and the great maintainer. Get your own bag.
The dictator is more able to get the kinds of things done we credit to a single man, but not much else. A Stanford leadership podcast says that in the management literature you find that a leader gets 50% of the credit or blame, but contributes only 15% to the final outcome.
Much of the point of the invisible hand metaphor is that a lot gets done in markets where you can't easily point to any one person to assign all the credit/blame. I also recently learned that Adam Smith tossed off the phrase "invisible hand" in passing, and that his acolytes elevated it to the level of faith-based market economics.
For many people, knowing who to blame is more important that getting things done (or the right things done), even if The man blamed is exempt from consequence, but the blamee pays with his blood and kin.
When the Germans voted Hitler into power, they weren't looking forward into the Palantir at the mass rape of the mothers, sisters, and wives by the Russian hordes bent on retribution. No, they voted him in because of their frustration and the sense that he could get things done. A little more heed to outcome rather than credit/blame, we'd have fewer of these people around. They start small. Soon you find yourself in uniform with a man behind you instructed to shoot you if you take one step back. You hate the regime you're fighting for, but that hatred is never more than 10 seconds away from an anonymous, unmarked grave. The only question is whether it will be a solitary grave in the ditch on some dirt road, or if you'll have plenty of company among the bone fields of Stalingrad.
Not the original poster, BTW.
Why do you think free speech is good for the humankind, overally?
Well, this is basic civics, I'm surprised you didn't learn this somewhere. You might want to pick up a good book about governments and learn this basic stuff.
Put down the jingoism and pick up a book about the Socratic method. You missed a great opportunity to discuss the idea in favor of just posturing over it. The question is worth thinking about, and if the answer is obvious, then it should either be easy to explain without resorting to insults and rhetoric, or it's a sign that you haven't thought very deeply about the matter.
We can demonstrate empirically that democracies overall have been better for humankind, this is history.
Can we? Step back for a second and realize that democracy, in it's modern-state form with support for free speech, is only a few centuries old. That's a blip in the eye of history, and it's one that has taken place in a small, historical technological window which made decentralized form of government possible. That perfect storm after the printing press, rifles, & cannon but before mechanized standing armies, pervasive surveillance, and NBC weaponry. Back when it was safe and reasonable for the common man to have just as much firepower as their government and when the shield anonymity married with ease of spreading ideas. Will that last?
And has it been better for people? Certainly so far! (I'd say.) But will that last in the upcoming age of homebrew bio-labs, ever more powerful methods energy generation, storage, & release methods in the hands of civilians, and the power of the internet to focus and unite radical extremists like Islamic terrorists, white power groups, and anti-government militants?
It's hard to say.
As the power of a single crazed individual to wipe out increasing numbers of people before being taken down grows, will that last factor make full free speech unworkable? Will the knowledge of how to kill people in job lots combined with virulent and hate-driven ideologies be allowed to proliferate unchecked? Does free speech need limits for the survival of mankind, and will is a government that restricts speech too much worse than one that restricts it too little in the long run? Is such a government even capable of surviving its own citizens -- either the killers within their ranks or the panicked masses who run screaming for safety in their wake?
I'm personally biased towards greater liberty, but I wouldn't dismiss the other side out of hand. Societal stability has its merits.
You couldn't use USB or Firewire drives on your Mac? Never heard of that one before.
freedom. of. speach. Takes all kinds.
When he was in Delta Force. I bet he could bowl a 180 backwards with his eyes closed, and that explains why Kim could only bowl 300 yet neither open or close his eyes more than dental floss.
I could, as long as I wasn't using music CD's or commercial DVD's.
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As soon as I hear that some evil dictator is starving his people to death I remember another evil dictator who supposedly had WMDs north, south, east, and west of his country's capital city. They even have pictures.
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More seriously, his son succeeding him as the Great Successor just shows that not only do the Communists lie when they describe their countries as Peoples’ Democracies (North Korea’s official name is Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea), but in this case, they’re even lying about being a republic. These are monarchies, plain & simple. The Kim dynasty in Pyongyang – Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and now Kim Jong Wu.
But this highlights another existential dilemma for this country, similar to East Germany in 1989. Countries like Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Vietnam could all shed Communism and remain who they were. But once East Germany ceased to be Communist, it lost any rationale of being separate from West Germany, and ultimately merged. Same thing will sooner or later happen to Korea – South Korea is already the country people think of when they talk about Korea, so if North Korea ever sheds Communism, it would just merge into one Korea. Unless Beijing tries to stop it from happening, in which case, it won’t.
Just wish that the Castros (both Fidel & Raul) as well as Chavez hit the bucket, sooner rather than later. For their countries, it should be easier – Cuba will remain Cuba, and Venezuela will remain Venezuela.
That's a question i have been asking myself as well.
It depends on who would have been in charge and how well managed the county would have been without Stalin. Without his purges, the military would have been much more competent- he killed off the best commanders. The military commanders under Stalin suffered massive casualties while learning on the job during first two years after German invasion. Regarding collectivization- that REDUCED the food output- soviet union had food shortages until its very dissolution. Czars managed to feed the cities without collectivization and Holodomor. Using slave labour in gulags (for mining and logging) in Siberia also killed off so many inmates that I doubt it was really that profitable- better living conditions would have been only marginally more expensive and would have probably given better productivity through higher morale and lesser mortality.
So in hindsight Soviet Union could have been much better managed between the wars. But hindsight is easy. Real question is if other people of the period who could have been in charge instead of Staling would have managed it better, and would they have been insightful or aggressive enough to build up enough military to win against Germany.
--Coder
when i saw the headline yesterday, i thought he died doing 69. if i had a choice, that's how i'd check out
Ah, good point. There's no way of knowing how prevalent true mourning for his death is. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if it was highly so, given all the propaganda and brainwashing, and some of the other stories people have told here about defectors' views of him.
weinersmith
Some are predisposed to believe the US is bad and I can't disabuse them from that belief. We took Iraq from Saddam Hussein and gave it back to their people, costing us near a trillion dollars and over 4,000 American lives we didn't have to spend. We could have kept it as a vassal, and milked its oil dry, but we didn't. We set the people free and went home. We probably shouldn't have. Saddam Hussein was a very bad man, but he wasn't the only one in Iraq. The Iraqi people don't want to be free, and they found a new tyrant even before we left. Genocide looks like their fate in the near term, and it's hard to escape blame for that now that we've put our boys in it. The individual people were better off as a slave state to the US, no matter how much they hated it, but they're going to like what they get now even less now that we're gone - even though just recently that was their greatest wish. Be careful what you wish for.
Maybe it's best to not get involved in the middle east. They have issues that we, with our 250 year old country just don't understand. What do we know about a war that's gone on 5,000 years? Our whole country is as old as they would think is settling of a nice house, just the the foundation of a good church that might come to something some day. We don't even know what a good grudge is.
And Afghanistan: I have to say this: for 5,000 years gleaning the fields of the fallen is Afghanistan's business model. They've been invaded by everybody, and it seems they've adapted to that quite well - so much so that they need to be invaded now and then because their economy is based on the dross of invading armies. They have no resources except that they're a desert on the road from somewhere to somewhere else. That's not a good country to attack.
We need to express our care for their poor and help them as best we can, and get the heck outta there.
Help stamp out iliturcy.