An Afghan woman in Kabul: ‘Now I have to burn everything I achieved’

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&#x27;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&#x27;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.

This is the kind of thing that could force a president to resign.