Afghanistan and The Emperors’ New Clothes

I know a fully clothed individual when I see one and Afghanistan is not fully clothed.

Just as Iraq was never fully clothed in spite of all efforts of the Bush administration and the media to make me see clothing, Iraq now sits in the middle of the village square in Baghdad, morphed from the butt naked Emperor into the several tons of bronze statue of Rodins’ “The Thinker”.

The Emperor got tired of walking in the parade so he sat down; Still naked as a Jay bird! Still pensive. Still attracting awesome questions of deep puzzlement and alas, foretelling the future of soon to be equally decimated Afghanistan.

To date, I have had a zillion people telling me what they think Afghanistan is wearing -why we are fighting this war- just as they tried to tell me what they thought Iraq was wearing i.e., why we were fighting the war in Iraq.

And to make a long story short, yesterday, in the Rose Garden, while heralding the resignation of Gen. McChrystal, Pres. Obama, in my opinion, won the coveted Blue Ribbon with eloquent rhetorical efforts for me to see, Lord, I’m trying, the clothing he is seeing on Afghanistan:

So make no mistake:  We have a clear goal.  We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum.  We are going to build Afghan capacity.  We are going to relentlessly apply pressure on al Qaeda and its leadership, strengthening the ability of both Afghanistan and Pakistan to do the same.
That’s the strategy that we agreed to last fall; that is the policy that we are carrying out, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/06/23/president-obama-afghanistan-general-mcchrystal-general-petraeus

As always,
BB