This was a war that was never needed, and always a bad idea right from the beginning. This was all about showing how strong Bush was and how he was better than his father. It also made a lot of war material builders very happy and wealthy. The fact that this went on for 20 years shows just how bad an idea it was right from the start. The Afghan people were never responsible for 9/11, and those that were responsible largely got away with it. So the French were defeated in Afghanistan, the Russians were defeated in Afghanistan, so it was clear that the US would probably run into the same issues.
I agree with everything you say here. And I would add that all of these disastrous outcomes could have been prevented if we had simply left a minimal presence of a few thousand largely non-combat personnel, centered around the Bagram Air Base, which would have allowed the base to stay open and operable.
At the time I characterized the move of a total withdrawal, after spending 20 years at the cost of 200,000 Afghan and 2000 plus American lives and over 2 trillion dollars, as being as though we had spent 2 years and 2 million dollars building a house in the middle of a hurricane zone and then failing to spend $100 dollars a year on hurricane insurance. A tragic mistake.
This is the first I read of the AUF, and good to think there may be an Afghani-owned solution in the future. I also remember the knee-jerk reaction to the suicide bomber of the horrible mistaken targeting of a UN worker and family with a drone attack. We need to make these wrongs right, starting with granting those visas to those who helped us. At least.
This was a war that was never needed, and always a bad idea right from the beginning. This was all about showing how strong Bush was and how he was better than his father. It also made a lot of war material builders very happy and wealthy. The fact that this went on for 20 years shows just how bad an idea it was right from the start. The Afghan people were never responsible for 9/11, and those that were responsible largely got away with it. So the French were defeated in Afghanistan, the Russians were defeated in Afghanistan, so it was clear that the US would probably run into the same issues.
I agree with everything you say here. And I would add that all of these disastrous outcomes could have been prevented if we had simply left a minimal presence of a few thousand largely non-combat personnel, centered around the Bagram Air Base, which would have allowed the base to stay open and operable.
At the time I characterized the move of a total withdrawal, after spending 20 years at the cost of 200,000 Afghan and 2000 plus American lives and over 2 trillion dollars, as being as though we had spent 2 years and 2 million dollars building a house in the middle of a hurricane zone and then failing to spend $100 dollars a year on hurricane insurance. A tragic mistake.
This is the first I read of the AUF, and good to think there may be an Afghani-owned solution in the future. I also remember the knee-jerk reaction to the suicide bomber of the horrible mistaken targeting of a UN worker and family with a drone attack. We need to make these wrongs right, starting with granting those visas to those who helped us. At least.