This is horrifying, and there's plenty of room to criticize Biden's handling of the pullout, but not sure another two decades of U.S. and NATO occupation was the right answer. Or maybe four decades, or six, or a century. This had to end, and was never going to end well.
https://twitter.com/Neoavatara/status/1425067185857257472
The speed of the Taliban advance, much of it with zero military opposition, shows we were building castles on sand. Billions of our dollars were poured into rat holes of corruption, and our bureaucrat-generals relentlessly lied to us about the results.
breitbart.com/asia/2021/07/3…
breitbart.com/asia/2021/07/3…
Say what you will about the military-industrial complex, but it was better than the new military-political-bureaucratic complex. Our soldiers can still win wars. Our pols and politicized brass cannot realize victories. They treat wars like exceptionally bloody welfare programs.
Afghanistan is a sinkhole of corruption and tribalism where honest planners should have known there was no way to build a stable government capable of fending off the bloodthirsty fanatics of the Taliban. The Kabul power structure assumed we'd stay there forever to protect them.
Listen to what the people in Taliban-captured cities are saying: Kabul did nothing to protect them. Government troops fled before the Taliban, often without firing a shot. They were certain we'd change our minds and protect them once things got really bad.
The blind stupidity of nation-building, from Bush through Obama, was a fusion of neocon folly and the statist obsession with "fixing" everything via huge permanent bureaucratic programs. Swap out a few leaders, spend a few billion on social programs, and everyplace can be Peoria.
Part of the problem is that decades of aggressive anti-colonialism robbed Western societies of our clear-eyed understanding of what it takes to actually conquer and rebuild a civilization. We don't do conquest anymore, so we shouldn't do occupation either.
We are no longer capable of doing what we did to, and for, Imperial Japan. Yes, both - horror and destruction beyond imagination, then a blossoming into one of the world's great nations and best of friends. That was a job for ADULTS. We have become too infantile for such things.
We just spent twenty bloody years, across multiple presidencies, proving that occupation and nation-building are no alternative to conquest and reconstruction. Let us never make that hideous mistake again. It is sinful to waste American lives and resources on futile endeavors.
Fair enough to say we will never conquer, but in that case, we should not role-play at some childish imitation of conquest that pretends billion-dollar magic wands can conjure stable Western societies out of endless savagery and fanaticism. Destroy the enemy and move out.
We're mired in too many globalist scams that involve pouring money and blood into permanently corrupt and unstable regimes while bureaucrats and profiteers skim big bucks off the top. Nothing ever changes for the better if we keep subsidizing and protecting horrid regimes.
Having said that, it will be heartbreaking to watch Afghanistan fall into the Taliban's bloody grip again. A lot of decent people with hopes for a better future will be enslaved and killed. Children are dying over there. It is appropriate to be horrified. /end
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