Double your Trouble.

Letter Posted to this article in Salon.com by Sidney Blumenthal about Ron Suskind's new Book, "The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11"

Does everyone over 30 remember how scary the Soviet Union was for 50 years? A technologically advanced, centrally planned juggernaut with many friends in the world (including one 100 miles from Miami). But then they invaded Afghanistan, and for 9 bloody years watched the mood of their citizenry and their international prestige go very sour. There were many reasons for the downfall of the Soviet empire, but none larger than Afghanistan. 15 years ago these same neo-cons were even gleefully saying that Afghanistan was their 'Vietnam'. Except for the little detail that Vietnam didn't lead to our downfall, they would be right.

Well it seems that Vietnam was only a warm-up. Afghanistan wasn't enough of a historically proven quagmire for us. No, we had to 'double-down' and jump with two feet into another quagmire at the same time.
We can only hope that future historians won't be calling Iraq our 'Afghanistan'.

But then, hope without action is useless.