Failure As An Option

I’m hardly an expert on foreign policy. That represents a big difference between most who post on Facebook and me. Between the political experts and Constitutional scholars, social media has just about obviated the need for formal education or rational thought.

I can't help thinking, though, of the news about Afghanistan or the potential future. It’s not a pretty picture, but an inevitable one. "All things must end," as Bernie Madoff said when made off with the last dollar with which anyone trusted him.

It took us longer to fail in Afghanistan than it did the Russians. That, I admit, is "damning with faint praise."

I’m temped to say that it was an example of applying the wrong solution to the right problem which is, someone said, better than applying the right solution to the wrong problem. The bull enclosed in the ring and surrounded by thousands of screamers is not wrong to charge. It's just that the red cape isn't the right problem.

In our case, it was right to deal with the terror, cruelty, murder and instability created by unreasoning religious fever. It's just that guns were never going to accomplish the goal of peace against an army whose members were going to receive 72 virgins in Heaven upon death in battle. Oh, and lest we forget, it was an army supplied and supported by a neighboring country with its own flair for duplicity.

We held the zealots back for a long spell with sheer force. But in the long run, their god was stronger than our god. Instead of applying military power in such cases, we might have tried facts, reason, and rationale. After all, we had 20 years.

But to do that now, we’d have to set an example right here in America first. The current situation in our state doesn't suggest success though.