Those who believe that righteous indignation and protest politics were appropriate in the struggle to end Jim Crow, but that something less will do as we seek to dismantle mass incarceration, fail to appreciate the magnitude of the challenge. If our nation were to return to the rates of incarceration we had in the 1970s, we would have to release 4 out of 5 people behind bars. A million people employed by the criminal justice system could lose their jobs. Private prison companies would see their profits vanish. This system is now so deeply rooted in our social, political and economic structures that it is not going to fade away without a major shift in public consciousness. NY Times May 15, 2011
Yeah, not likely anything good is going to happen in that sector of the economy anytime soon.
In 1989, after helping defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, partly by funding the activities of one Osama Bin Laden, the U.S. walked away.
I have seen references to this fact over and over again in discussions of why Afghanistan– and Pakistan– is still a mess of anti-western agitation. The U.S. helped knock out the Soviets and then walked away and allowed fundamentalist Islamic elements to take over. To this day, apparently, Pakistan does not trust the U.S. to provide stable support in their struggle against radical Islam and that is why they hedge their bets by maintaining links to the the Taliban leadership.