Recommended: Afghanistan—Graveyard of Empires?

Max Boot, a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute, has just published a good article on Afghanistan: Afghanistan - Graveyard of Empires? He makes the point, no doubt valid, that continued America aid will be required if we are not to see Afghanistan revert to exactly what it was before we invaded it - a haven for terrorists. If that were to happen, all the coalition lives (3,427 total, of which  2,287 of them were American) and all the American dollars (somewhere between $4 trillion and $6 trillion, including medical care for the wounded and repair/replacement of equipment) spent there will have in essence been squandered to no purpose.