Matt Taibbi has written the obvious but excellent article on American incompetence and mendacity in regard to Afghanistan:
Every image coming out of Afghanistan this past weekend was an advertisement for the incompetence, arrogance, and double-dealing nature of American foreign policy leaders. Scenes of military dogs being evacuated while our troops fire weapons in the air to disperse humans desperate for a seat out of the country will force every theoretical future ally to think twice about partnering with us …
The pattern is always the same. We go to places we’re not welcome, tell the public a confounding political problem can be solved militarily, and lie about our motives in occupying the country to boot. Then we pick a local civilian political authority to back that inevitably proves to be corrupt and repressive, increasing local antagonism toward the American presence.
Read the whole thing. And then scream.
Update (19/08/21) Matt Taibbi has written a second article, We Failed Afghanistan, Not the Other Way Round.
If this were the 1880’s we would be saying exactly the same thing about the British in Afghanistan. Lord Elphinstone led an army of 16000: soldiers, wives and families ,retainers and administrators. One survived to tell what happened- and he was left only alive by the pashtuns so that he could return to tell how the army had been butchered. I wonder if the Americans were ever aware that this has been tried several times in Afghanistan and every time it has had the same result….It was only the soviets that failed to conquer
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it
Yeah, but one could hope for a little more time between repetitions.
Am reading Margaret MacMillan “War: How conflict shaped us”.
Why?