A great quote that I first spotted on Andrew Sullivan's blog this morning...
"...The president genuinely views this remote, landlocked, primitive Central Asian country as a vital U.S. national security interest."
"What is it about Afghanistan, possessing nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention. In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered, but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan's importance is simply assumed---much the same way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. as then, so today, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny."
-Andrew Bacevich, Commonweal
