A Note to Sara (see what you can do about this, ok?)

JMZ Platform, Eastbound

Watching the News Hour tonight, wifey and I couldn't help but marvel at the continuing folly that is the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. We missed the one and only chance available in the modern era to solidify any semblance of central government in Afghanistan when the Bush administration hoodwinked the country into a war in Iraq. No matter what happens in Iraq, it is a massive failure of long term policy. At this point, with renewed interest in Afghanistan comes ever greater pitfalls. No outside (or inside) entity has ever been able to govern that rock strewn death trap, and I'd say none ever will. We ought to get out now, transfer all those funds, considerable brainpower and anything else we might have spent in the losing cause surrounding Kabul to helping Pakistan create a viable judicial system, a functional healthcare and services system and an intelligent, non-corrupt and pragmatic governing class. Let Afghanistan fade into the darkness that has always been Afghanistan. Foster the already solidly moderate culture of Pakistan (which already has the bomb.)
This has been an official, sanctioned announcement hatched, concocted if you will, by the great minds of the Stewart de Trejo Commission for Pragmatic Foreign Policy.

(Granted, neither of us are professional foreign servicemen, bureaucrats, technocrats, democrats or experts, but I read The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk, we both lived through the quagmire that was the "Soviet Vietnam", watch the News Hour and read the New York Times, BBC online, Gawker and Perez Hilton daily, buy the Economist when we fly and have suffered through a three year subscription to Foreign Affairs magazine. We are pretty sure that qualifies us, in light of our elected official's own scant credentials, to some arm-chair opining.)