One reason I’m glad that President Obama, unlike George W. Bush, is hesitating to play Alexander in Afghanistan….
We have preferred the power that apes greatness, first Alexander and then the Roman conquerors whom the authors of our schoolbooks, through some incomparable vulgarity, teach us to admire. We, too, have conquered, moved boundaries, mastered heaven and earth. Our reason has driven all away. Alone at last, we end up by ruling over a desert. What imagination could we have left for that higher equilibrium in which nature balanced history, beauty, virtue, and which applied the music of numbers even to blood-tragedy? We turn our back on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and their blood is the color of printer’s ink.
—Albert Camus, “Helen’s Exile,” from The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (tr. Justin O’Brien)
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
A thorny question. Just today we have the U.N. acknowledging that there was massive fraud in the Afghan election, which means that Karzai's government is illegitimate, and will certainly be seen as illegitimate by the people we rightly want to support against the despicable Taliban. But do we commit blood and treasure to sustain Karzai's illegitimate government? I'd have to say no. I&
what would you have obama do in afganistan??