“Americans want someone to fault, and, understandably, they’re pointing the finger at President Joe Biden, whoas commander-in-chief does deserve the brunt of the immediate blame. But the truth is that Biden’s deadly mistakes are a symptom of a thoroughly rotten established political order, one to which Democrats and Republicans alike, along with conservative and liberal media, are beholden.”
Bodies littered the Kabul airport on Thursday as bloodied and battered survivors of a suicide bomber were carted off in wheelbarrows. When the dust generated by the blast settled, more than 100 people had perished, including at least 13 American service members: 10 Marines, two soldiers, and one sailor.
For many Americans, fury has replaced grief in the wake of tragedy. After two decades of wandering in the Graveyard of Empires, they have nothing to show for it but a mountain of skulls and a river of blood. Two trillion dollars burned in the furnace of the war machine, thousands of Americans killed before Thursday; and now, more sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands will never return home.
Americans want someone to fault, and, understandably, they’re pointing the finger at President Joe Biden, whoas commander-in-chief does deserve the brunt of the immediate blame. But the truth is that Biden’s deadly mistakes are a symptom of a thoroughly rotten established political order, one to which Democrats and Republicans alike, along with conservative and liberal media, are beholden.
Recall that by November 2001, the Taliban had been beaten into submission and were suing for peace, making virtually no demands. But Washington was not interested; its hubris would not even allow it to entertain the idea of yielding.
“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the time.
President George W. Bush went from campaigning against the fool’s errand of nation-building to boasting in his memoir that “Afghanistan was the ultimate nation-building mission.” Only a year before the war began, Bush warned that “if we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem coming down the road.” And yet, just two years after the first shots were fired in Afghanistan, Republicans would launch a second nation-building war in Iraq.
