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Everything is so screwed up at this point that its hard to find anything about our politics or our government that doesnt look like it was designed by an unholy hybrid of Edsel Ford and Mr. Natural. Ever since we opened the shebeen, we have had one simple question about the continuing United States military involvement in Afghanistan, in which it has been involved longer than it ever has been involved anywhere elsenamely, what exactly are we still doing there?

So, last week, the Washington Post published the equivalent of The Pentagon Papers in which we learn that all or most of our leaders for the past decade and a half dont know either, but that they were not any more inclined to share that with us than were McNamara, and Abrams, and the rest of those guys back in the 1960s.

Or, as was said by a certain former Democratic candidate for president, how do you ask someone to be the last man to die for a mistake?

HOSHANG HASHIMIGetty Images

This has been a bipartisan cock-up right from jump. None of the three administrations involved in it comes out of this report looking like people youd trust to wash your car. One trillion bucks and climbing, and what have we learned? Basically, that we havent learned anything. It took the Post three years to pry these documents loose (and theres nothing that Post editor Marty Baron likes better than prying documents loosejust ask the Archdiocese of Boston), and we find that the old Vietnam Syndrome wasnt kicked very far during our walkover wars in the 1980s and 1990s.

Frankly, and maybe its because I persist in believing that the activism of the 1960s actually accomplished something lasting, I cant believe that weve gone down this road again. Hell, weve made hit movies about the Pentagon Papers. That was a watershed. Everybody learned a lesson from those documents, right?

And, of course, the most damning thing about these revelations is that they vanished from the media almost immediately, lost in the din of the barely organized crazy that this administration has brought to Washington. This was a monumental scoop, the result of dogged work by the entire news operation of the Washington Post, and most people know far more about Giulianis insane overseas ramblings than know anything about the archived failure and waste present here.

Everything is awful.

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I Just Can't Believe We Went Down This Road Again - Esquire