Isn't it Ironic?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates thinks so:

“I think you need to have a highly developed sense of irony,” Gates told me in an interview aboard the Doomsday Plane. “Because twenty or twenty-five years ago, I was shoving arms across the border to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,” a former mujahedin leader turned anti-American warlord.

Whether or not you need a sense of irony, it does seem that this history should inform some of America's forward-looking discussion on how to handle Afghanistan. To wit: "shoving arms" into the hands of tribal militias isn't always the best long term strategy.

(AP Photos)