The Iraq Distraction: When Their "Right" Hand Strokes And Their Left Hand Slaps, The Outcome Is All Bad For America

Say it ain't so. Could it be that there is one more reason why the decision to invade Iraq was wrong?

Certainly, it doesn't help to point out more failures of the W, Rove and Co. On the other hand, here's another sign that things have been going south under the W, Rove and Co for a great long time.

As you read through the first paragraph, ask yourselves which country is this reporter discusssing?

A car bomb rips through a U.S. military convoy in the capital. A suicide bomber assassinates a provincial governor; another bomber kills six guests at the governor's funeral the following day. Gunmen launch fierce daily attacks on Western troops and government security forces.

However much it sounds like the war in Iraq, this is the war in Afghanistan, started in 2001 to oust the radical Taliban regime, capture Osama bin Laden and destroy the safe haven for his terrorist network al Qaeda.

Five years later, U.S. and NATO troops are fighting a resurgent Taliban at the highest scale since the government was toppled in November 2001. Bin Laden remains at large, opium production is at a record high, and Afghanistan resembles a feudal hodgepodge of fiefdoms run by warlords instead of a centrally governed nation of 31 million people.

Is it me, or does anyone else find it ironic that we are improving things for the illegal opium industry by fighting the GWoT? Given that we have been running a "war on drugs" longer than a "war on terror," could it be we haven't learn from the mistakes in execution of the former to win both? It's like the W, Rove and Co stroke and stoke the fires of war on terror only to slap our guys fighting the war on drugs.