âBy golly, weâve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.â
Well, at least Vietnam had the sorry excuse of the Cold War and the existential threat apparently posed by Soviet Communism. Sorry, because it failed to identify and recognize local, national motivations for rebellion against colonial occupiers and collaborators.
The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was impulsive. Driven by hyper-vigilant mass hysteria following the Sept 11th attacks, which given the provocation — should have been anticipated.
20 years, thousands of lives, $2T...yeah, I trust my government leaders.
Afghanistan: How the Taliban gained ground so quickly
The speed of the Taliban advance in Afghanistan appears to have taken many by surprise - regional capitals seem to be falling like dominoes.
The momentum is clearly with the insurgents, while the Afghan government struggles to keep its grip on power.
This week, one leaked US intelligence report estimated that Kabul could come under attack within weeks, and the government could collapse within 90 days.
So how did it unravel so quickly?
The US and its Nato allies - including the UK - have spent the best part of the last 20 years training and equipping the Afghan security forces.
Countless American and British generals have claimed to have created a more powerful and capable Afghan army. Promises that today appear pretty empty.
20 years, thousands of lives, $2T...yeah, I trust my government leaders.
Afghanistan: How the Taliban gained ground so quickly
The speed of the Taliban advance in Afghanistan appears to have taken many by surprise - regional capitals seem to be falling like dominoes.
The momentum is clearly with the insurgents, while the Afghan government struggles to keep its grip on power.
This week, one leaked US intelligence report estimated that Kabul could come under attack within weeks, and the government could collapse within 90 days.
So how did it unravel so quickly?
The US and its Nato allies - including the UK - have spent the best part of the last 20 years training and equipping the Afghan security forces.
Countless American and British generals have claimed to have created a more powerful and capable Afghan army. Promises that today appear pretty empty.
The 2007 episode marked an escalation in the war on two fronts. By targeting the vice president at the heavily fortified base at Bagram, the Taliban demonstrated an ability to inflict high-profile, mass-casualty attacks far from the insurgentsâ strongholds in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
And by lying about how close the insurgents had come to harming Cheney, the U.S. military sank deeper into a pattern of deceiving the public about many facets of the war, from discrete events to the big picture. What began as selective, self-serving disclosures after the 2001 invasion gradually hardened into willful distortions and, eventually, flat-out fabrications.
This account is adapted from âThe Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,â a Washington Post book that will be published Aug. 31 by Simon & Schuster. A narrative history of what went wrong in Afghanistan, the book is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who played direct roles in the war, as well as thousands of pages of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
The interviews and documents, many of them previously unpublished, show how the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump hid the truth for two decades: They were slowly losing a war that Americans once overwhelmingly supported. Instead, political and military leaders chose to bury their mistakes and let the war drift, culminating in President Bidenâs decision this year to withdraw from Afghanistan, with the Taliban more powerful than at any point since the 2001 invasion.
"If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."
Gotta love the condescending arrogance of ethnic cleansing terrorist patriots like Mr. Friedman. Every time he writes on foreign policy issues, I do not see visions of sugar plums and fairies dancing through my head.
I see visions of dead Americans and dead people who look like Americans dancing through my head. Along with far greater numbers of dead innocent brown-skinned civilians.
2 weeks ago Folks dumb enough to believe that Taliban fighters need to be paid bounties to want to kill an occupying force should not cross the street by themselves.
