So we lost the "good" war in Afghanistan that went "bad?"
Although the al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead and no major attack on the U.S. homeland has been carried out by a terrorist group based in Afghanistan since 9/11, the United States has been unable to end the violence or hand off the war to the Afghan authorities, and the Afghan government cannot survive without U.S. military backing.
Bin Laden is dead and no major foreign attacks on US soil but Afghanistan can't defend itself without our help?
Let me add that allied Afghan government forces are killing jihadis every day instead of shielding jihadis so they can attack America at home:
In Afghanistan we defeated the Taliban government that hosted al Qaeda and wrecked the terror sanctuary that bred 9/11. And we built an imperfect ally that is out there every day killing jihadis so we don't have to. It is a success that our role is far more limited to supporting these allies on the ground than it was when we had 100,000 Americans on the ground in direct combat.
And that is a defeat? Please spare me. And cut the BS about that BS "Afghanistan Papers" nonsense from the Washington Post.
I assume that killing bin Laden and preventing Afghanistan from being a 9/11 threat isn't counted as defeat. So we're left with Afghanistan not able to fight our common enemies alone.
But as I said, Afghan forces are killing jihadis every day backed by small numbers of American troops. The same is true for Iraq, for that matter.
And pray tell, what American ally is able to defeat its enemies all by itself without American military support? NATO was unable to take on civil war-wracked Libya in 2011 without American help!
When has a European power projected significant military power in recent decades without the assistance of America's logistics machine? Even pounding on civil war-wracked Libya was embarrassingly reliant on America despite pretensions of showing that Europe could lead the show.
Over 18 years the cost of fighting in Afghanistan in lives and money is relatively small. And more importantly, we passed the peak costs and now have to defend what we achieved with our sacrifice.
The BS comparison of spending on the campaign in Afghanistan to federal spending on education is simply stupid and misleading when you consider that defense is a sole federal government responsibility while education is overwhelmingly a state and local government responsibility.
But yeah, I was way ahead of the curve on predicting the "good" war in Afghanistan would become "bad." Although it is sad that this holds for a lot of conservatives in addition to liberals.
For some people no definition of victory can include anything that America achieves.
For the War on Terror that began with our offensive into Afghanistan, we might be better off thinking of the post-Iraq War and post-Afghanistan War situation as the Global Troubles.
So read that initially linked article at your own risk. But if you want to waste your time on it rather than letting me take the spear for the team, that's your business.
