Afghanistan

 Of course we've known for at least 12 years that we were going to abandon Afghanistan, and every politician in every Party went along with the refusal to face the fact that being incapable of fighting the Taliban with full, deadly intent, as we fought WW2 guaranteed their eventual victory.  You don't want to make the Pakistan border a total death trap for incoming Taliban using mines, seismic detectors, and nightflying IR vision choppers to kill every human within 20 miles of the border, you don't want to have ROE that will bring on more collateral damage but kill more Taliban and make people more afraid of you than of them?  Then you are playing by the rules the Taliban makes, and depending on a tribal culture with a high level of Muslim fundamentalists to decide to come over to you, which is going to happen right after you see the sky full of flying pigs.

 

Now we have super reinforced what the lesson of Viet Nam was for most of the world, which is just make the conflict long and messy and hang on, the Americans will go home and we win.  Doesn't matter how big their military,  how well equipped, if their leadership cannot commit deeply to doing whatever it takes to overcome some nasty, violent opposition, then we can do what we like and laugh at the diplomatic protests and sound bites of upset and frustration from the USA and pretty much everyone else.

 

The future is looking darker all the time.  Unless somehow things change a lot here and we get real leaders back in power, the age of US power ends.  And that's not good for us or the world.

 

Del

=============================================================

https://cepa.org/afghanistans-end-portends-a-darker-u-s-future/

 

Afghanistan’s End Portends a Darker U.S. Future