"Really, what I was trying to differentiate was goals that are 10 or 20, 30 years in the future in terms of a completely democratic, corruption-free, fully economically developed ally," Gates says. "That's the Valhalla, and I think that's a little ways in the distance."
Poor choice of metaphor for paradise. What with Valhalla being a place where everyone has a drunken party before a bloody battle that eventually kills everyone present. I don't think that's our goal for Afghanistan. I think even Olympus is a pretty chaotic place. Maybe Eden is what he was trying to say. (What's your favorite paradise metaphor?)
I can see that he'd be trying to avoid Christian metaphors so as not to offend a Muslim nation. But any Afghani who knows Norse mythology should be pretty pissed off at his choice of metaphor. Oops.
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