When I heard Massoud died of his wounds in the hospital, I intended to write a gloomy rant in the usenet newsgroup I then frequented about the return of the Dark Ages to Afhanistan. I mulled over it by day. But when I got home and switched on the TV, to CNN, I saw a picture of WTC I burning besides WTC II, and then the second plane impacting... (It was a replay half an hour later, but maximum shock effect on me.)

Today apart from a few UN-patrolled areas Afghanistan is firmly struck in the Dark Ages, with warlords and Taleban guerillas holding real power, and Mad Max-style Americans fighting the latter, and no one cares because the country has a 'government'.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}