actually rebuilding Afghanistan
Maybe, though I strongly suspect that lack of "buildings" is not the main constraint on Afghanistan - more like lack of civil culture. To fix Afghanistan, you would have to replace the culture, which is not really a feasible option.
Yup, I was using "rebuilding" in the broader sense of socioeconomic/cultural infrastructure.
Here's my op-ed that uses long-term orientation, probabilistic thinking, numeracy, consider the alternative, reaching our actual goals, avoiding intuitive emotional reactions and attention bias, and other rationality techniques to suggest more rational responses to the Paris attacks and the ISIS threat. It's published in the Sunday edition of The Plain Dealer, a major newspaper (16th in the US). This is part of my broader project, Intentional Insights, of conveying rational thinking, including about politics, to a broad audience to raise the sanity waterline.