LESSONS FROM ANOTHER FAILED U.S. WAR: That’s the title for The Federalist piece by Sumantra Maitra on the imminent withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, after 20 years of “stabilizing” the unstabilizable.

This graph captures the essential background:

“It was the same when the British empire retreated from Kabul in 1842, realizing that, unlike other parts of the globe that had some coherent form of civilization, Afghanistan had none, and as a result, had little chance of any genuine improvement. Upon their exit, the British kept a wary eye on the region and on the potential Russian imperial invasion that never came. The empire often took punitive counter-insurgency operations against tribal rebels, but never tried to occupy or pacify the proud region ever again (there are archival photos of the British-Indian air force bombing Afghan rebels in 1937).”

I’m not holding my breath on whether the U.S. elite has learned anything from these past 20 years.