The only thing I would add to this is how defensive officials I talk to get when I say plainly that America lost the Afghanistan war. It’s instinctive, tribal and revealing, a glitch in the matrix of American Exceptionalism. https://t.co/vmHcgeab2M
— Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) April 2, 2021
Mixed emotions on this one, but just on the semantics. I don’t think that we LOST the war in Afghanistan, I think that the Afghans BEAT us.
The phrasing of “Lost” implies that the agency was all on the part of the us, but the American public lacked the will to continue. (It’s called the Green Lantern theory of geopolitics.)
This terminology allowed our military to learn nothing but how to lie to the American public in response to the Vietnam debacle.
In Afghanistan, much like in Vietnam, we were beaten, and once again, we will learn nothing from this.
There was no way to win militarily. $2.2 trillion later we would have made more progress by spending 1/10th of that paying for education and economic development. We should have learned the lessons of the occupation by Alexander the Great, the British and the Soviets. It is impressive that we lasted far longer than they did, but the modernity and progress we may have brought won't last if an armed, reactionary male minority has anything to say about it.