Afghans better off now than before

My good friend Jeff Weintraub has a post up about this, centred on a piece by Peter Bergen but also offering observations of his own. Jeff doesn't deny that much has gone wrong, nor that things could get worse after the US and its allies depart. But, even so, his judgement is unambiguous: 'every piece of available evidence indicates that for the great majority of Afghans conditions have improved dramatically, not only by comparison with the period of Taliban rule, but also by comparison with the decades of war and devastation that preceded it'. You can read the whole thing here.