Great article about the mess is Afghanistan and why the offensive in Marjah is meaningless. Also, a great quote: "So here we are in the AfPak Wonderland, complete with a Mad Hatter (the clueless and complacent media), Tweedledee and Tweedledum (the military, endlessly repeating itself and history), the White Rabbit (the State Department, scurrying to meetings and utterly irrelevant), the stoned Caterpillar (the CIA, obtuse, arrogant, and asking the wrong questions), the Dormouse (U.S. Embassy Kabul, who wakes up once in a while only to have his head stuffed in a teapot), the Cheshire Cat (President Obama, fading in and out of the picture, eloquent but puzzling), the Pack of Cards army (the Afghan National Army, self-explanatory), and their commander, the inane Queen of Hearts (Afghan President Hamid Karzai). (In Alice in Wonderland, however, the Dormouse is "suppressed" by the Queen of Hearts, not the White Rabbit or the Cheshire Cat, so the analogy is not quite perfect.)"
The situation in Afghanistan is just like Vietnam, only worse for us. Karzai has become "erratic" and is showing chutzpah in bringing the electoral commission under his own control, after he obviously stole the last election. Is this what our soldiers are fighting and dying for and what were borrowing and spending billions of dollars to finance?
This article equates Alan Grayson (D-FL) with Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) as the paragons of insanity in either party. I reject the analogy. Both have made very controversial statements about the other parts (or members of it), but here is the important difference: Grayson makes a point by exaggerating what is fundamentally true (that Republicans are not serious about addressing the actual, serious problems in health care), while Bachmann says things that have no basis in reality (Obama is anti-American, death panels, etc. ad nauseam). The former is a rhetorical strategy. The second is deceit and lying.
http://www.salon.com/news/michele_bachmann/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/03/03/bachmann_grayson
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/01/down_the_afpak_rabbit_hole?page=0,0
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