I recently wrote about Said Hyder Akbar's book "Come Back to Afghanistan," in rereading this nineteen year old's life at the center of the events that led to the re-emergence of Al Queda in Afghanistan, it makes our Middle Eastern foreign policy of the last eight years look like a poorly played game of Risk. You know, when you play with someone with no strategy whatsoever. Mind you, this is a current Yale undergraduate writing from the ground with access to the top "good guys," who would eventually be on Karzai's team, including his father. Akbar recounts precisely ow the US turned to Pakistan and for protection and distribution of funds and military supplies. We used the corrupt ISI under Musharaff to aid visionaries who wanted to rebuild Afghanistan and return Kabul to its cosmopolitan lifestyle. After Sept. 11, 2001, all of the refugees who had been major policy makers, writers and thinkers were hopeful that the United States was ready to help rebuild what the Soviets and then the warlords had destroyed.
My first week canvassing in Keene New Hampshire back in january, I had he privilege of going door to door with Susan Rice and her handsome son. Our boys were about the same age and we thought it would help them from getting too bored. Ms. Rice is one of Obama's top foreign policy experts. I got to hear, first hand her explanation to volunteers that Obama had believed a venture into Iraq was misguided when the culprits of 9/11 were in Afghanistan. We needed to focus on preventing the increasing power vacume that Afghanistan was experiencing. Said Akbar recounts from the Afghani perspective precisely how that is wat occurred. A high school graduate from suburban California had a more valid grasp on world events than our President and the advisors he chose to implement. We can never make up to the Aghan people our aquiescence to Pakistan's corrupt military to distribute aide to their country, but we can begin to listen to the best and the brightest minds in foreign policy, as well as eager Afghan allies who have always been willing to share the events of their coutry with the US government.
The situation is desperate. It has been for years but better late than never.
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