full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Rory Stewart: Time to end the war in Afghanistan

Unscramble the Blue Letters

But when we began to bring more money, when we began to invest more resources, things got wosre, not better. How? Well first see, if you put 125 billion dollars a year into a country like Afghanistan where the entire reuvnee of the Afghan state is one billoin dollars a year, you dworn everything. It's not smlpiy corruption and waste that you create; you essentially replace the priorities of the Afghan government, the elected Afghan government, with the micromanaging tendencies of foreigners on shrot tours with their own priorities. And the same is true for the troops.

Open Cloze

But when we began to bring more money, when we began to invest more resources, things got _____, not better. How? Well first see, if you put 125 billion dollars a year into a country like Afghanistan where the entire _______ of the Afghan state is one _______ dollars a year, you _____ everything. It's not ______ corruption and waste that you create; you essentially replace the priorities of the Afghan government, the elected Afghan government, with the micromanaging tendencies of foreigners on _____ tours with their own priorities. And the same is true for the troops.

Solution

  1. worse
  2. revenue
  3. billion
  4. simply
  5. drown
  6. short

Original Text

But when we began to bring more money, when we began to invest more resources, things got worse, not better. How? Well first see, if you put 125 billion dollars a year into a country like Afghanistan where the entire revenue of the Afghan state is one billion dollars a year, you drown everything. It's not simply corruption and waste that you create; you essentially replace the priorities of the Afghan government, the elected Afghan government, with the micromanaging tendencies of foreigners on short tours with their own priorities. And the same is true for the troops.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
existential threat 3
global security 3
light footprint 3
billion dollars 3
united states 2
mobile telephones 2
commandant haji 2
haji malem 2
malem mohsin 2
mohsin khan 2
mullah mustafa 2
place full 2
troop deployment 2
united nations 2
mountain rescue 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
commandant haji malem 2
haji malem mohsin 2
malem mohsin khan 2

ngrams of length 4

collocation frequency
commandant haji malem mohsin 2
haji malem mohsin khan 2

Important Words

  1. afghan
  2. afghanistan
  3. began
  4. billion
  5. bring
  6. corruption
  7. country
  8. dollars
  9. drown
  10. elected
  11. entire
  12. essentially
  13. foreigners
  14. government
  15. invest
  16. micromanaging
  17. money
  18. priorities
  19. put
  20. replace
  21. resources
  22. revenue
  23. short
  24. simply
  25. state
  26. tendencies
  27. tours
  28. troops
  29. true
  30. waste
  31. worse
  32. year