Say what you will about the shit job that the US military industrial complex has done in this region, but I can't help but feel that the real horror of the withdrawal is that 50% of the country's population is being condemned to what is essentially slavery.
The most striking thing to me is the incoherence. It’s as if a bunch of sprawling, unaccountable bureaucracies —- the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department, Congress, the DNC, the MIC —- were prosecuting essentially independent agendas that could co-exist under the fog of a forever war, but someone accidentally triggered the exit routine and rather than graceful closure you see the incoherent stuttering of a bunch of zombie processes.
My feeling is that we tried. We tried for 20 years. It didn't work.<p>At some point, you have to throw in the towel and cut your losses—even when those losses are really, unimaginably terrible. 20 years is certainly past that point.<p>There's a lot of good we could do in the world with the resources we put into Afghanistan.
They could learn from the Kurds: women can fight just like men can. Hoping that someone else will fight your war for you will leave you vulnerable and disappointed.