So carpet bombing is a legitimate political tool? Sounds similar to Madeline "the price was worth it" Albright to me.

I did need to write back though, because I forget to ask one thing (having the flu can do that to you) and it was a very substantial question. That is, I am very interested in seeing any credible source of information you could provide to back up your claims of ethnic cleansing on the part of Zahir Shah. Of the Prime Ministers who were the primary decision makers in Afghanistan during the first 20 years of Zahir Shah's reign - which would be 1933 (not 1947) to 1963, it was Daoud (who with the help of the Parcham faction of the PDPA ousted Shah in 1973) who was perhaps the biggest Pashtun chauvinist of the era. He was so obsessed with the issue of "Pashtunistan" (the uniting of the Pashtun areas of Pakistan with Afghanistan) that ultimately in 1960 he sent troops across the border into Bajaur in an unsuccessful attempt to manipulate events in that area and to press the issue. Afghan military forces were routed by the Pakistan military.1 Upon his resignation in 1963 Muhammad Yousuf, a non Pashtun, was made prime minister.

For anyone interested in a real world solution to the crisis of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah or a relative might have to be included in the transition. The reasons for this being the Afghan people trust and support him more than any other leader (A survey conducted in 1987 by Afghan scholar Sayed Bahuddin Majrooh's Afghan Information Center, based in Peshawar, Pakistan, found that 70 percent of Afghan refugees living in Pakistan favored the king's return. Majrooh was assassinated in 1988, allegedly by an Islamist faction led by Gulbudin Hekmatyar, who strongly opposed a role for Zahir Shah.Pastuns make up 45% max of the Afghan Population so do the math), he has always been at odds with
the fundamentalists, and his reign was the most democratic in the history of the country. (It certainly wasn't the totalitarian Soviets/PDPA -No one should fall for the lie that Imperial occupation and control can be justified by its "potential modernizing influence". (How different is that from bushco's "bringing democracy to the middle east" nonsense?)

1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reigns_of_Nadir_Shah_and_Zahir_Shah

(also a good brief overview of the era, both shortcomings and advances)