One of history’s most important lessons is that politicians should never be given a free hand to borrow money to cover the costs of wars, overseas adventures, or military spending.

Is it finally light at the end of the Afghan tunnel, or an oncoming express train? Total confusion erupted last week as the US, NATO, the UN and the Kabul government all issued differing views on new plans to end the nine year Afghan war by bombarding Taliban with tens of millions in cash instead of precision bombs.

Here in normally arid southern California, we’ve just endured a week of torrential rains, tornados, flash floods, and mud slides. Some roads have even turned to rivers in the great western monsoon.

The scenes of horror and chaos that followed Haiti’s devastating earthquake were a stark reminder of that tormented nation’s gravest problem: it has no functioning government. Nor has it had one for the past decade.

To better understand why Osama bin Laden is so far winning his struggle to oust the western powers from the Muslim world, let us go back to 1986, when I was covering the anti-Soviet war in then almost unknown Afghanistan.

Yemen, the likely source of the failed Christmas Day airliner bombing at Detroit, has just rudely intruded into the West’s awareness. Militant sources there claim the attack by a young Nigerian was retaliation for extensive covert US military operations in Yemen. Welcome to the Afghanistan of Arabia

*America is beset by airport chaos after a 23-year old Nigerian tried to bring down a Northwest-Delta flight to Detroit with an underwear explosive device (UED).

Washington is finally getting some of the democracy it has long been calling for in Pakistan. The result is a disaster for US “Afpak” policy.

I guess President Barack Obama has never read Benjamin Franklin’s maxim, “there never was a good war, or a bad peace.”

President Barack Obama has missed two sterling opportunities to wind down the ugly Afghan morass he inherited from George W. Bush.