Eikenberry was by all accounts a sincere man who cared deeply about Afghanistan, someone who tried his best. But I felt a crushing kind of pain in that room, to see an American leader behave in his faux jovial press-conference American way, seeming to believe his kindness was all that truly mattered. As he spoke, I was again reminded of the way Baldwin and Camus and so many others had described Americans, as people with no sense of tragedy.
