Archives for July 2003

The sky IS falling, but it is landing mostly on the heads of the naysayers who claim we have ABANDONED Afghanistan:

The simplistic way to look at what’s been happening here since the Taliban regime was vanquished a little more than 19 months ago is to focus on the broken promises, the lack of progress and regular warnings that at any moment Afghanistan could again be torn apart.

Which explains why that is all you hear coming from certain political quarters.

For a better view, drive to this mountainside village 90 minutes north of Kabul.

It takes an Afghan, someone who knows that this country was one of the world’s poorest and least-developed even before it was devastated by two decades of fighting, to see a picnic as a sign of something larger. It also takes an Afghan to note that it’s a stretch to try to compare the situation and lessons learned here with what the United States and its coalition partners now face in Iraq, where some object to the presence of foreign troops and the temporary control of their country by U.S. bureaucrats.

Several decades of war, no economy to speak of, terrible education, and the memory of the despotic Taliban rule, and still, the average Afghani is more worldly and sophisticated than the average Ny Times reporter. They recognize things are getting better- but do not gloss over the existing problems:

To be sure, Afghans don’t think there has been enough progress. And they don’t dismiss the daunting problems their country still faces:

What do Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party officals who sat in on UN Weapons Inspection interviews with Iraqi scientitsts to intimidate the scientists have in common with Justice Department officials who sit in on interviews conducted with the 9/11 commission?

While the Republicans have thrown out all of their principles and have now become the new Democrats, spending irresponsibly and greedily creating the Prescription Drug entitlement as a new Republican vote-buying scheme, the Democrats appear to have thrown out all of their senses. For months, Democrats have been flailing about, attacking blindly, taking partisan cheapshots, and generally behaving like mean-spirited, unprincipled, snot-nosed teenagers who just had their pet Congress taken away. Apparently, this is not a phemonenon that is limited to national politics, and Democrats have become nuts EVERYWHERE: