Today, Washington’s hallucinations rival those during the Bay of Pigs fiasco—when U.S.-backed Cuban exiles were allowed to fend for themselves on the beach during their failed invasion, because President John F. Kennedy denied them the use of their own and U.S. air cover in order to keep U.S. involvement a secret. No matter that everyone in the hemisphere already knew the U.S. was training the invasion force in Central America, because the New York Times had done several stories on it.

Not only is the U.S. occupation force in Afghanistan incensing Afghans, it is fueling the resurgence of the Taliban there and aggravating the rise of Islamist militancy in nuclear-armed Pakistan. In both cases, the perceived meddling of “infidels” on Muslim soil is stoking resistance.