AFGHANISTAN

The Rolling Stones article that finished the US commander in Afghanistan took me back to the old days of the Vietnam War, right down to some of the best reporting coming from Rolling Stone magazine.

I believe that the lessons are:

LESSON No. 1

YOU CAN NOT SOLVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS WITH MILITARY FORCE.

I do not want to see Afghanistan dissolve into violence and draconian repression of women.

I wish the US could work with the UN to have a UN peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.

We should not kid ourselves that we can actually win a war in a place where only Genghis Khan was able to win a war. The US does not wage war by killing everyone who dares to disagree with us.

LESSON No. 2

Do not get drunk with a reporter. Do not make nasty inside jokes in the presence of a reporter. Just because a reporter seems to agree with you does not mean that the reporter actually agrees with you.

LESSON No. 3

You can get fired from a job you do not want by ignoring lesson number 2.