Arrogance and Hubris: Will US Hawks never learn?

Bravo President Biden!

Messy? Yes.

Bottom line: Vietnam, Afghanistan, or X, without a clear exit strategy, military campaigns fail and the resulting chaos should be expected before employment.

American imperialism must cease. Any attempt to force political, economic, and/or cultural influence beyond our borders always fails, particularly during a time when we can’t even seem to maintain our own way of self-governance.

From the NYT 8/17/21:

Jake Wood was a 25-year-old Marine sniper deployed to a forgotten corner of Afghanistan in 2008 when he started to see how much daylight there was between the optimistic pronouncements of top American leaders and the reality of serving with Afghans on the ground.

Villagers in the district center of Sangin, where he manned an outpost, seemed to have little allegiance to the Afghan government in Kabul or the American vision of democracy.

“We had no idea what our mission was, even back then,” said Mr. Wood, who now runs the nationwide veteran volunteering network Team Rubicon. “Were we trying to defeat the Taliban? Were we nation-building? I don’t think we knew.”

The Afghans he served with seemed to accept the uncertainty with a weary fatalism foreign to young Marines. At one point over small cups of tea, he said, he spoke with a young Afghan he served with who said Afghanistan only knows war, and when the American war ended, another would come.

Mr. Wood said the veterans he has been in touch with feel a mix of sadness and fury watching the fall of Kabul: sadness that the folly that seemed so obvious in the ranks took years and thousands of lives for top leaders to accept; fury that the result of that ignorance and hubris was playing out on cable television in a way that would tarnish the reputation of the nation and the hundreds of thousands of troops who fought.

The present and future leaders who control the American mighty military machine should take notice and be contained.

CPW