The news coming out of Afghanistan is endlessly fascinating! Grimly fascinating, some of it, like watching the proverbial slo-mo train wreck, but there are also the stories that make us shake our heads, roll our eyes and cry, "WTF??" and "OMFG!!" and "What were they thinking?"

Agence France Presse (AFP) reports that some leaked diplomatic cables reveal that American diplomats suggested trucking in Bollywood movie stars to Afghanistan to "bring attention to social issues there." The thinking - if it can be called that - was that the Afghans are bonkers for Bollywood films, and appearances by India's voluptuous leading ladies and their smoldering on-screen loverboys would somehow, ah...would somehow...(here's where the concept gets fuzzy)...lead to peace in Afghanistan? Of course if the Bollywood beauties did come to Afghanistan and perform in a sort of USO show, a la Ann-Margret and Bob Hope in Vietnam (that sure helped!), they would be unrecognizable under the burqas which they would no doubt be forced to don, since it would be impossible to pixillate their cleavages and bare bellies as is done on TV. Then the punch line: the diplomats touted this scheme as part of India's "soft power" assistance in Afghanistan. "Soft" seems the wrong adjective for the hordes of sex-starved young Afghan men who watch Bollywood films.

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Feckless is not a term normally used to describe a strategy that involves wars spanning decades that cost trillions of dollars accompanied by the creation of a worldwide network of bases and outposts. Yet it is appropriately applied to the mindless exercise in stealth empire building that the United States is pursuing. Careless, irresponsible, lacking in clear purpose, no logical links between supposed ends and actual means. That fits what we are doing to a tee. The "we" refers to the nation at large, the Obama administration and its Bush predecessor in particular, and the community of foreign policy thinkers that orbit it. It embraces our follow-the-leader European allies as well.

The events in and around last week's NATO summit in Lisbon are emblematic of the backhanded way that America's historic project habitually is treated. We learn of a firm commitment to be militarily engaged in Afghanistan at least through 2014 via a public announcement by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Washington's latest man in Brussels. Suddenly the touted pledges about a 2011 drawdown are eclipsed. The explanation, such as it is, is conveyed to the American people, and the world, via a short Obama op ed in the International Herald Tribune. It goes unremarked -- as doubtless the White House intended. For the basic questions of what we are doing there and elsewhere in the region never have been addressed -- or even publicly recognized.

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Where in the world would you find Karen Armstrong in a room with 2,000 opinionated Muslims... all enjoying a lively discussion about tolerance, compassion, and religion? At the Karachi Literature Festival. Yes, Karachi. As in Karachi, Pakistan... the city where this week's headlines include "Tribal elder's house blown up," "Schoolteachers block road in protest," and "Relatives thrash doctors after 10 year-old girl dies." Is there any space for intellectual discussion in this city?

The answer is a resounding "Yes!" Over 5,000 readers, writers, and book-lovers thronged to the Carlton Hotel on the coast of the Arabian Sea to mingle with Pakistan's leading authors. Noted religious historian and interfaith spokesperson Karen Armstrong lent her voice to the general message of the festival -- that intolerance thrives amidst ignorance. "We really know so little about one another. Diversity within oneself and among others should be appreciated, and we should be open to change," she said. And what better way to learn than through a book? Works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, in both English and Urdu, were displayed on tables at the outdoor pavilion, while concurrent sessions with authors and journalists took place in the conference rooms throughout the hotel.

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Jared Lee Loughner's motives are obscure, but it's hard to disentangle the shooting of a Congresswoman, and the killing of a federal judge, a 9-year-old girl, and four other people from the political culture that it occurred in, an environment of exaggerated divisions, the demonization of opponents as socialists or traitors, and a lot of gun rhetoric, gun imagery, and ... guns. Almost certainly, history will tie the two together no matter what we learn about Loughner in the coming weeks. Political madness is a recurring strain American history in which, on some level, we all take part: "I shouted out/Who killed the Kennedys?/When after all/It was you and me."

So, this is a collective problem. Pinning blame won't really work, because we end up back in the workings of Loughner's mind, which we don't understand right now, and may never. We're probably not going to find some triggering phrase in all the millions of nasty political words spoken in the past couple of years, either. See Ken Silber's reasoned take on rhetoric. Clearly, for instance, Sarah Palin was not inciting violence with her "rifle sights" (or "surveyor's symbol") graphic, crass and obnoxious as it was. Sharron Angle, with her "Second Amendment remedies" quote, came right up to that line, however. But it's doubtful Loughner was paying much attention to a Nevada Senate race.

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