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Article: Losing Afghanistan: prolonging this good war may be worse than persisting in the bad one in Iraq.(graveyard of empires)(Cover story)
- Article from:
- The American Conservative
- Article date:
- July 28, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 The American Conservative LLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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F. SCOTT FITZGERALD observed, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." From that perspective, some of the proud members of Washington's reality-based community exhibit the characteristics of very intelligent super-achievers when they ridicule President George W. Bush's grandiose plans for remaking Iraq--while embracing similarly ambitious designs for nation-building in Afghanistan.
But then, as George Orwell wrote in 1984, "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them" amounts to the kind of ...