Fraud

When I began reading the paper this morning, I decided that our government, and the New York Times, were playing an April Fool's joke on all of us. Then I checked the calendar and came to the sickening conclusion that what could only pass for bad fiction, was in fact an even worse reality. Can it be that we have really been in peace talks with a fraud ("Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Imposter")?

Move over Clifford Irving. Step aside Michaele and Tareq Salahi. Get off that plane, Frank Abagnale, Jr. There is a new king of fake in town. His name is (or more accurately, is not) Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour.

I don't understand this. I thought we were able to tell what each of the Taliban leaders was eating for breakfast. If we don't have a thorough and comprehensive knowledge of the workings of the enemy, is it too much to hope that we at least know what they look like? How can we aim our smart bombs at them if we can't even tell which ones we are actually trying to kill?

We are now almost a decade in to the Afghanistan struggle. We appear to be wandering the mountains without a clue of how to get out. As money pours out to a phony second in command, we place our hopes for peace on what turns out to be nothing but a mirage.

This war has been increasingly hard to justify, as we count lives lost or damaged beyond repair in pursuit of an indecipherable goal. It just got harder.