“Shut the fuck up” exceeded my mandate. I regret it; I retract it. Bad Vairtere.

She followed the advice to a point anyway, deleting the stupid tweets and going to ground for a few days to reconsider, and then came out swinging again, which was the best thing that could have happened in the end.

She brought on Laura Jedeed, a veteran of the undeclared war, and (mostly) let her speak instead. That was valuable and good, and even dare I say charming.

There are still some parts in the middle of this interview where I disagree with her, but I can do so respectfully now. In particular, she takes some time to soothe her vet guest by trying to say that it wasn’t all for nothing. But in the terms she means, of course it really was all for nothing, and the temporarily and marginally improved lives of Afghani women were by no means worth all the death, let alone two trillion dollars.

But I know she’s saying what she’s saying in the interests of healing the now. We should all be so essentially good in the heart.