NEW YORK — “A land mine,” observes a sardonic character in “The Kite Runner,” now landed on Broadway in the summer heat. “Is there a more Afghan way to die?”
That shocking line, taken directly from the 2003 novel by Afghan American author Khaled Hosseini, distills the trauma of that long-anguished nation, rich in resources but partitioned in strife, long fought over by the British and the Russians and seen by the Biden administration as an unwinnable quagmire that caused the longest war in U.S. history.
For many Americans, although not all, the best Afghan strategy has meant making an exit while shrugging off the humanitarian cost of aiding and abetting the further rise of the Taliban, a terrifying sect for whom lethal land mines long have been the weapon of choice. Along with executions.
