Nit­pick­er asks “Who’s a fuck­ing appeas­er?” as:

U.S. Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Bill Frist said Mon­day that the Afghan war against Tal­iban guer­ril­las can nev­er be won mil­i­tar­i­ly and called for efforts to bring the Islam­ic mili­tia and its sup­port­ers into the Afghan government.

At the time, of course, al Qae­da was not a pri­or­i­ty for the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. We now know that Con­doleeza Rice, then the Pres­i­den­t’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor, was blow­ing off warn­ings from the CIA about an impend­ing attack, and then spent years lying about it.

Hav­ing final­ly stirred itself to care about al Qaeda/Taliban con­trol of Afghanistan, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion did every­thing pos­si­ble to shift their focus away from Afghanistan and the fight against ter­ror­ists. Hav­ing suc­ceed­ed in dis­tract­ing them­selves, it now appears that the plan is to declare vic­to­ry and accept a dis­as­trous loss in what ought to be the defin­ing bat­tle of our time

(Yes, I’m aware that Frist is try­ing to walk back what he said, and it would­n’t be the first time he tried to take back some­thing fool­ish he said.)