Great article. In the six hours since you published it, Kabul has fallen and the presidential palace looks like the Capitol on January 6th, or really more like Batista's presidential palace in January 1959 after Castro arrived in Havana. The biggest surprise to me is that anyone at all is surprised. Forget Vietnam. Forget the 1900 Philippines war. Did we learn nothing from the Soviet invasion of this exact same country? Not long ago I was talking with a Marine buddy of mine who saw two tours in Afghanistan and two in Iraq . I asked him about the ol' "hearts and minds" idea of "spreading democracy.
He said, "Yeah, in Iraq it almost makes sense, although most of the people who live there don't consider themselves Iraqi as much as Sunnis, Kurds, or something else. But Afghanistan? You gotta be fucking kidding me. That place is literally in the middle ages. They have zero knowledge of anything outside their local sphere. Outsiders are people from the next valley. Americans and Russians and Chinese might as well be from another planet. They have no idea of democracy, no interest in it. They don't even have words for the concepts it supposedly embodies."
He went on to say that it was typical bullshit dreamed up by people who knew nothing. "My friends died so the Sackler family could flood poor America with cheap opioids." The way he said it broke my heart.
The GOP is trying to pin this on Biden, but the failure is pure Rumsfeld. He was the only Defense Secretary worse than MacNamara. This may hurt Biden's domestic agenda, though that remains to be seen.
Maybe even closer to sixty years of misguided US policy. How long did it take the US government and military to forget Vietnam? Not long at all. Bosnia, Serbia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan? It probably took them about six months to put what we lost in defending South Vietnam in the memory hole.
There was no other way this was going to end. You could extrapolate the occupation to any timeline. Unless we were prepared to decimate (in the Roman and nazi sense) villages every time there was an attack. Unless we were prepared to reserve the Afghan population like we did in the plains and in Manila. There was no other possible ending. And that’s it. We need hearings on failure and corruption. . But I don’t have hope.
There was no way in hell that I wasn't going to subscribe after reading this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am so fed up with the heroes at Wapo and The Times who want us to believe that success is 'just around the corner" after 20 freaking years and $ Trillion. You should thank them.
An honestly implemented $1 billion bounty on bin Laden and associates would have been enough. Taking out his supporters in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would have hit the Taliban where it hurts. We never did enough to trace the money or cut it off.
Great article. In the six hours since you published it, Kabul has fallen and the presidential palace looks like the Capitol on January 6th, or really more like Batista's presidential palace in January 1959 after Castro arrived in Havana. The biggest surprise to me is that anyone at all is surprised. Forget Vietnam. Forget the 1900 Philippines war. Did we learn nothing from the Soviet invasion of this exact same country? Not long ago I was talking with a Marine buddy of mine who saw two tours in Afghanistan and two in Iraq . I asked him about the ol' "hearts and minds" idea of "spreading democracy.
He said, "Yeah, in Iraq it almost makes sense, although most of the people who live there don't consider themselves Iraqi as much as Sunnis, Kurds, or something else. But Afghanistan? You gotta be fucking kidding me. That place is literally in the middle ages. They have zero knowledge of anything outside their local sphere. Outsiders are people from the next valley. Americans and Russians and Chinese might as well be from another planet. They have no idea of democracy, no interest in it. They don't even have words for the concepts it supposedly embodies."
He went on to say that it was typical bullshit dreamed up by people who knew nothing. "My friends died so the Sackler family could flood poor America with cheap opioids." The way he said it broke my heart.
The GOP is trying to pin this on Biden, but the failure is pure Rumsfeld. He was the only Defense Secretary worse than MacNamara. This may hurt Biden's domestic agenda, though that remains to be seen.
Maybe even closer to sixty years of misguided US policy. How long did it take the US government and military to forget Vietnam? Not long at all. Bosnia, Serbia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan? It probably took them about six months to put what we lost in defending South Vietnam in the memory hole.
Great article. I am one of few who agree with you.
This is a great column. I agree, obviously…
There was no other way this was going to end. You could extrapolate the occupation to any timeline. Unless we were prepared to decimate (in the Roman and nazi sense) villages every time there was an attack. Unless we were prepared to reserve the Afghan population like we did in the plains and in Manila. There was no other possible ending. And that’s it. We need hearings on failure and corruption. . But I don’t have hope.
There was no way in hell that I wasn't going to subscribe after reading this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am so fed up with the heroes at Wapo and The Times who want us to believe that success is 'just around the corner" after 20 freaking years and $ Trillion. You should thank them.
An honestly implemented $1 billion bounty on bin Laden and associates would have been enough. Taking out his supporters in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would have hit the Taliban where it hurts. We never did enough to trace the money or cut it off.