In twenty years of effort, America built an Afghanistan that in large measure rejected Islamist ideology, But our friends required American support to defeat the rejected ideology. Then we abandoned these foes of jihadis.
For all the complaints that America achieved nothing in 20 years of helping Afghanistan fight jihadis and their sick ideology, we may have made enough of the people too hard to brutalize with Islamism for long:
[Afghanistan] is having the same problems the 2001 version had, but worse. For two decades after the 2001 Taliban were out of power, Afghanistan prospered in many ways. The economy, lifespans, infrastructure and education levels reached new highs. The [Taliban government] has reinstated many of the pre-2001 rules that turned most Afghans against the Taliban.
And we created a government that killed jihadis every day and was willing to suffer heavy casualties to do that:
We built up Afghan security forces from scratch. We've kept the place from being a launching pad to attack our country. And Afghan security forces on our side continue to fight and kill jihadis every day with our help. Despite years of saying that their casualty rate is unsustainable, Afghan forces keep sustaining it. I'm pretty sure the enemy casualty rate is worse. [UPDATE: This is what I was thinking about: six years ago there were worries about sustaining the casualty rate. They have. And the enemy loses more.]
What we achieved was good enough:
I don't care that we couldn't forge a nation in Afghanistan. Nobody else did. Nobody else will any century soon. But we built a state that fought at our side and that should have been good enough.
Afghanistan wasn't very good. It was no Vermont. But it was good enough. Yet America screwed the pooch and chose defeat over expending the relatively small effort needed going forward because we suddenly tired of the past cost--which could not be recovered by losing.
Will we circle back to help those we abandoned and prevent the place from becoming a terrorist sanctuary again?
NOTE: My latest war coverage is here.
