Rich, that’s fair enough. I didn’t know that was the original context and I’m grateful for the clarification. However, while I didn’t go into it in the post this morning, I did not just rely on the meme. I read up on a number of things our commanders, the Pentagon, and others in government have been saying about what we’re trying to accomplish in Afghanistan. In my column, I quoted a relevant passage from the New York Times (see below). While the Mullen quote has clearly been distorted, but the underlying point remains valid — we are trying to focus less on combat and more on Afghan economic development:

As military officials described it to the New York Times, “the overriding goal of American and NATO forces would not be so much to kill Taliban insurgents as to make ordinary Afghans feel secure, and thus isolate the insurgents. That means using force less and focusing on economic development and good governance.”