Josiah Harlan was the first American to enter Afghanistan. He did so as a doctor with British Forces. We’re not talking about the 1990s, but the 1830s. Harlan was a brilliant, self-absorbed adventurer who’d read a few medical books and passed a cursory exam to be an army surgeon. He later attempted to become an Afghan prince, leading his own army.

No matter his extreme self-importance and self-centeredness, Harlan’s abilities as a primitive doctor helped a lot of people. An elderly Afghan woman heard he was a surgeon and approached to ask if he’d operate on her cataracts that had blinded her. He proceeded in the painful surgery and she was instantly able to see. He was about to apply the dressings, but she resisted. She said, “Let me first look upon the face of my deliverer to whom I owe …