"The United States has two abiding national security interests in South Asia: preventing a nuclear war between Pakistan and India, and averting the proliferation of atomic weapons. The United States should work towards South Asian nuclear arms reductions, or even disarmament.

"But it must also find innovative ways to help Pakistan maintain internal political stability. Current U.S. policy approaches the challenge ass-backwards. Instead of acknowledging a nuclear threat, we’ve propped up an illegitimate, corrupt government in Kabul and picked a fight with the Pashtun people that fundamentally destabilizes Pakistan. Approximately 40 million Pashtuns, an Eastern Iranian people that have successfully resisted British and Russian control in the past, live on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The longer we stay this course, the worse things will get. How can we change the mission without a domino effect of political collapse that adds to the nuclear risk?

"Jonathan Landay, the senior national security and intelligence correspondent for McClatchey (sic) Newspapers, performs an invaluable service in reporting on various dimensions of this quandary. It’s impossible to second-guess his conclusion that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would be catastrophic. Less clear is whether we have the time, or intelligence, to come up with a workable plan. I spoke with Landay in March, shortly after his return from a month in Afghanistan.

"Is there a way to make a continuing U.S. presence positive for Afghanistan?

"There is, but my question is whether or not the United States has time to do that. A senior NATO officer said to me, “Afghanistan is a nation of fence-sitters.” The U.S. military was the first foreign military in history that the Afghans, for the most part, welcomed into their country. That goodwill has been wasted by the previous administration. The Obama administration recognizes that, but after eight years, the question is: Is there still time left to reassure Afghans that the United States is not in their country as part of a war against Islam? This is the view that was created in the Muslim world based on the Bush administration—who were careless and arrogant in the execution of their policies, particularly in Afghanistan. Their policy was: Let’s patronize the warlords as our proxy to hold this place as we take our troops, money and time and invade Iraq. By doing that, they reinstated many of the hated elements whose misbehavior, exploitation and repression were what gave rise to the Taliban, who in turn allowed al Qaeda to use Afghanistan as its sanctuary."

Ernest Canning is a guest editor at Brad Blog and writes this commentary:

" 'Americans think that it’s healthcare that produces health, when there really is very little evidence for that. What turns out to be really important is the nature of caring and sharing in society….Where societies are more equal --- and economic equality is the thing that is most important in this --- people look after each other…and pretty well everyone does better. There’s almost nothing that is better in a society that tolerates the extreme levels of inequality in the United States. And so, we end up dying younger than people in all the other rich countries, despite spending half the world’s healthcare bill.' " - Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, March 30, 2009

" 'Who are we? Is this what we have become --- a nation that dumps people off like garbage who can't pay their hospital bills?' - Michael Moore, following a segment in which a confused elderly woman in a flimsy hospital gown is dumped curbside near a Skid Row rescue mission, in his documentary Sicko!*

"In Failed States (2006), Prof. Noam Chomsky, a preeminent linguist and one of this nation’s most prolific political writers, concludes that the U.S. suffers from a “democracy deficit” --- the significant gap between the policy positions of the electorate and their elected representatives --- which he attributes to the manner in which “elections are skillfully managed to avoid issues and marginalize the underlying population…freeing the elected leadership to serve the substantial people.”

"The deficit is especially acute in what Chomsky describes as “the most dysfunctional healthcare system in the industrial world.” Chomsky notes that a single-payer system --- that is a system in which all medical providers would be paid by a government entity as now occurs with Medicare --- has long been overwhelmingly favored by “a considerable majority” of the American people, but routinely dismissed by both the corporate media and the leaders of both political parties as “lacking political support” and not being “politically possible.”

"The issue touches on the core contradictions which arise because we have allowed private authoritarian entities, corporations, to subvert democracy by controlling our economy, our mass media and the manner in which we conduct elections.

"This piece will focus on the irrationality of a privatized health care system which values the wealth of a handful of CEOs of the parasitic and entirely unnecessary middle-men --- for-profit carriers and HMOs --- over the health and very lives of our people. It will explain what corporate America and their bought-and-paid-for politicians do not want you to hear..."