Afghanistan: Land of Contrasts, Our Neighbor to the East

There's something about the Middle East that confuses even the best of us. I'm not only talking about finding the One True Path to Mideast Peace here; I'm talking also about the simple geography of the area.

Any seventh grader worth his or her salt should be able to give you a rough idea of which countries are considered part of the Middle East; at the very least, said student would be able to tell you that the region is nowhere within thousands of miles of These United States. Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin? Not so much:

SAN FRANCISCO - Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin called Afghanistan “our neighboring country” on Sunday in a speech that could revive questions over her tendency to stumble into linguistic knots.

Three days after a mostly gaffe-free debate performance, the Alaska governor fumbled during a speech in which she praised U.S. soldiers for “fighting terrorism and protecting us and our democratic values”.

“They are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan,” she told several hundred supporters at a fundraising event in San Francisco.

This kind of thing--and the way it was portrayed in the article--raises the question of precisely how we can distinguish between a candidate's innocent misstatement and his or her jaw-dropping lack of knowledge about the world in which we live. Did Palin commit a flub because she is currently spewing roughly one trillion words per day (some of which are bound to be mistakes), or was this a genuine glimpse into her confusion about how the planet is put together? The world may never know.