THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN is going fine, just fine, thank you. Karzai is surreptitiously roaring about American forces being behind the Koran burnings and the civilian slaughter of sixteen since it's past our policy to call a book burning exactly what it is and make it grounds for a dishonorable discharge because in a bipartisan world the extreme right has a place in war, in politics and at the table of the gods, all with the bigoted vote to account for. It can be argued that people die in conflicts anyway, our long suffering heroes and torn civilians, regardless of the avalanche of prejudiced Anti-American feeling fed by a Taliban that starves its widowed women, destining them to poverty without any assistance because deprived of male support and our efforts at democracy, pressured by willful electoral misperceptions, undermine the work the Green Berets are doing with the civilian population by planning an early withdrawal, justifying it by attempting to stage the enemy as a talk partner, one that wouldn't be seen dead at peace chats because, hey, the field will be left clear of colonization soon enough. We're leaving a nation we promised to help into democracy a nation ruined by corruption, impoverished and suffering at the hands of exactly those we not only still try to organize civilians against but those we set out to defeat for justice, equality and wellbeing.