We’re Losing Afghanistan

Almost five years after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, the gains that Afghanistan has made are eroding, with the rights of women and children toppling first.

Taliban brutes are bombing and burning schools in an effort to prevent boys from learning anything but their distorted version of the Koran, and to prevent girls from learning anything. The carnage has driven parents and teachers to form an underground home schooling movement.

Let’s set aside Iraq for the moment—we’re losing Afghanistan. And where is the President, in whom I briefly trusted after September 11, 2001? Where is the First Lady, who once spoke eloquently on the rights of Afghan women?

I’ll tell you who’s going to “cut and run”: George W. Bush.

Iraq is a mess, Afghanistan is about to sink back into its ignorant abyss once more, and all George wants at this point is to stay in power long enough to foist his foreign and domestic policy disasters onto someone else. In two more years, Iraq will be lost and Afghanistan will be lost, and we’ll be saddled with a national debt the size of Jupiter, and George will drive away on his golf cart back to his ranch to happily clear brush (what does he grow on that ranch, anyway—brush?) and manage a baseball team, which is his real ambition in life.

And in the meantime, it’s Banned Books Week. How appropriate. Think of all the rights and privileges that we Americans have to educate ourselves (should we chose to do so, and turn off the damn boob-tube) that others, who hunger for such rights, do not.

Remember Afghanistan especially this week.