[Old Teufel Hunden]

"Let me know when a company named Taliban Technologies or Mohammed al-Faruk Industries is going to be producing anything of value for the human race anytime soon ... and by "soon" I mean within the next 500 years"

How many of those South Korean companies you mention were household names in America in 1967? That would be 17 years after we first went into South Korea.

I never said that Afghanistan would be the 'Tiger of the Middle East' as South Korea was once termed the Tiger of Asia. What I do intend to say is that Afghanistan can be a stable country that stands on it's own and will not allow Islamo Fascists a home to plot and plan against America. I don't care if their economy ends up being an export giant. That is their business.

[ek_hornbeck]

I think that the point isn’t so much that Korea and Japan became economic powerhouses following US occupation, but that Japanese and Korean people are capable of civilized behavior. I haven’t seen any evidence that the tribal societies of the Middle East with their Bronze-age religious fanaticism are remotely capable of the same.

[Alberta's Child]

It doesn't matter if they were household names in America in 1967. If nothing else, most of them were prominent companies in Korea long before anyone ever heard of them here.

Kia Motors was established in 1944. Hyundai's parent company was founded in 1947, and was established as an auto manufacturing company in 1967. Samsung was founded in 1938. LG Electronics began as GoldStar in 1958.

In other words ... three of those four companies existed even before the Korean War.

... Afghanistan can be a stable country that stands on it's own ...

Get real. The place is an 'effing dump, and will probably be a dump for hundreds of years. How many Islamic countries around the world are "stable" by any measure?