It is hard to stomach the master planners who have emerged from the woodwork to say they would have handled Afghanistan better when no one...no one...handled it well for 20 years, when we spent $1 trillion dollars and thousands of lives to cover the asses of misguided leaders.
Where were the master planners when the mission went beyond hitting back at Al Qaeda? Where were they we went into Iraq, diverting resources and focus? Where were they when the Taliban launched its counteroffensive after only two years?
Where were they when they Taliban reclaimed a third of the country? Where were they when it was clear our efforts to retrain the Afghan military were time after time after time producing bad results? Where were they when the Afghan gov't's incompetence & corruption took its toll.
Where were the master planners ten years ago when this outcome was clear? Where were they when Obama and Trump knew we should leave and could have been ferrying out our translators and those who aided us?
Where were they as it has been clear for the past decade that the Taliban would ultimately regain control and impose their twisted medieval values on the women of the country? Were they calling for airlifts then?
How many of these master planners and armchair critics advocated the policies that failed, cheered surges that didn't work, hailed spending increases, ignored women and girls or called them a rock in their policy rucksack, a drag on our real goals? (Look it up.)
Where were they when chance after chance to do this slowly and better and more securely lapsed over the past ten years? Where were they when Trump blithely said, "Hey, let's turn it all over to the Blackwater gang?"
Where were they when Trump and Pompeo sidestepped the Afghan government and negotiated with the Taliban and replenished them with prisoner releases and announced a precipitous departure and then handed that off to the incoming Biden administration?
Where were all the masterminds & the second-guessers and the critics and the "it's all so obvious" crowd and the compassionate and retrospectively wise? Because for 20 years we have gotten this wrong, they have gotten this wrong, and frankly, they have no standing to argue left.
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