I have to admit, I didn’t see this article when it was first published a couple of years ago. It’s an article by David Samuels from Harper’s Magazine and it is a wry, irreverent and totally enjoyable piece of writing.
What Samuels did was not easy — he went to a press conference in Washington and spun off from that a story that manages to more or less encompass the whole Afghan war (from a uniquely American perspective, albeit).
Barack and Hamid’s Excellent Adventure: Afghanistan’s President Visits the White House is not to be missed. Here’s a representative snippet.
How did we get suckered so badly? This time it is the liberal elites who have lost themselves in the ragged provinces where delusions of omnipotence collide with the cold realities of a war we are bound to lose. The Afghan war cost America $55.2 billion last year and will cost $72.3 billion this year. With every billion spent the logic behind the American war effort gets weirder and more phantasmagoric, which is why no one here talks about the war.
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