This is old news, what with the current obsession with constitutional amendments mandating balanced budgets --a stupid idea if there ever was one; is it superfluous to mention it's a Republican brainchild?-- and sundry other posturing by our political class, which has come to resemble nothing so much as the characters in a play by ... oh, maybe Oscar Wilde. Or a skit by Ernie Kovacs, like the immortal (and faintly racist) "Nairobi Trio." But precisely because the situation in Afghanistan is, however temporarily, off the front page, I thought it would be a good time to review the bidding, as it were. And so I've chosen two articles that address different aspects of that war and that country.
The first, from the July 9, 2009 issue of the London Review of Books, is an historical review of Afghanistan's position in international conflicts. Rory Stewart focuses on the "Great Game" of the 19th century between the Russian and British Empires and Afghanistan's role. Here is that piece. Next is David Bromwich's article, "The Fastidious President," in the November 18, 2010 issue of that same publication.
