There is your benchmark. The Soviets were 38-times more successful in Afghanistan than we were, and they did it in half the time.
Let that soak in. Let the humiliation flow over you like a healing balm. Fear and shame – regardless of what modern minds try to tell you otherwise – are great motivators. Let this motivate you.
Almost exactly two decades after the attacks of 11SEP01, as a nation we are covered in disgrace. A global humiliation on a national scale. Accept that. Hold it close to you. Feel it. Smell it. Know it, because it will be attached to us for at least the rest of the decade – most likely longer.
Good people can agree or disagree about staying or going from Afghanistan, but no one can defend how we did it.
Everyone here who [was] given responsibility by the American people failed.
The president failed. . . . All our intelligence agencies failed their government and the people.
Our think tanks, the legions of foreign policy and diplomacy PhDs from all the right schools who populate the National Security State who like to tell everyone how smart they are – they all failed.
They sure did. But so did State, Defense, and a host of other overpaid incompetents, whose track record even before this was pretty pathetic.
Plus, the big lesson:
We can do nothing about the past, it is done.
The present is already written.
What we can do is set the condition for the future. We can try to contain the compounding damage to our national credibility.
A first step is to tell our remaining friends that the United States knows failure and rot when it sees it, and is confident enough to excise it and move forward.
We need accountability. The honorable thing to do is to resign. If not, the proper thing is for the President to fire those who advised him so horribly. If not the President, then Congress should have hearings with a pair of pliers in one hand and a blow torch in another and humiliate people in to resigning.
If neither happens, then bad on the American people for allowing a political system to function in such a way that people such as these are the ones who rise to the top of both parties.
Indeed.