8/20/2021

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

Is Marc Theissen correct in his assertion in the WP that you are surrounded by sycophants? Do you think Sen McCain might have been right, when he said that Sec. Blinken was “dangerous to America?” Maybe you should put Condoleezza Rice on the security team so you’d have a voice of dissent. As you probably know, she thinks we should have waited a couple of more months to withdraw from Afghanistan until the end of the battle season. This would have given us time to develop a better exit strategy.

The Afghans have noted our haste in the past. Mullah Mohammed Omar is known to have said, “Americans have the clocks. We have the time.” They don’t set dates and make deadlines. Perhaps that’s something we could learn from them.

By the way, do you ever use the word, sycophant? I tend not to, because I’ve never been sure what it meant.  I associate it with nutty people (psychos) & large animals (elephants), which is close to its real meaning: people who stroke the egos of influential individuals. 

I wonder what will happen in places like Afghanistan & Myanmar, where addled young men with big guns feel free to enforce their own version of the law. While Afghan leaders are claiming things will be better than in 1989, people are saying, “Taliban actions are as different from their [leaders’] speeches as the ground is different from the sky.” Girls’ schools are being burned. Women are being harassed if they aren’t wearing a burqa. Soldiers are shooting into protest rallies. It’s grim!

I will pray that widespread use of social media will keep the aspirations of the youth alive so they will continue to resist the oppression of their misguided peers who have been seduced into violence.

May hope overcome fear in all corners of the world.

BYBS,