War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
USMC General Smedley Butler,1933
Afghanistan is a mess. Many --who dismissed its tragic history-- are shocked. Shocked that Kandahar, Herat, and Lashkar Gah have fallen to the Taliban, and it seems Kabul will soon be in their hands too.
The cottage industry of Western "Afghan experts," with their bizarre, and overly complex, power points and articles, which advocated for intricate Western economic, and social, interventions over the decades, were always about themselves and their own pockets. Not the Afghan people. And, not the American people i.e. our volunteer forces who lost their limbs and/or lives.
Had these "experts" in our government and Washington "think tanks" taken the time to read about past foreign interventions into the "Land of the Unconquerable", the lesson learned would've been crystal clear: without a legitimate leader in charge of a legitimate governmental system that was decentralized, the end result would be chaos and conflict among vying ethnic, social and tribal entities.
Treating the slick Afghans as naive fools, or children, who needed to be "taught" how to run their civil society, and be "inclusive" (aka gender equality), and "modern," and "democratic" reeked of mirror imaging and, frankly, Western hubris. Something the Soviets tried (to "communize" a deeply religious and traditional society) and failed miserably at.
The blame, however, is widespread.
First, and ultimately, the Afghans themselves are responsible for the dismal state of affairs within their own border. That they greedily (like parasites) relied on foreign baksheesh (charity) and hand holding for two decades is a stain on their nang (honor) in a honor based society, especially amongst the tribal Pushtuns, wherein one would kill one's own mother if need be to restore the family or clan's nang.
This is a deeply traditional tribal/ethnic zero sum culture in a nutshell. Zero sum. What the Taliban "offer" (perception wise), to the populace (well, the Pushtuns at least), is a return to national sovereignty, to justice, to one's traditional way of life at a time when the country as a whole is experiencing various degrees of schizophrenia. What do I mean?
Put yourselves in an Afghan shoes. In a very short time, since 2001, Afghan society went from a more or less 16th century way of life (with the sporadic exception of some "modern" conveniences in the cities) due to the complete destruction of civil society and infrastructure since the time of the Soviet occupation, to an overnight transformation. Now most Afghans have access to phones and thus access to the outside world like never before. Females and minorities A "transformation" thanks to the trillions of American tax payer dollars ($2.4 is the low figure bandied about IMO to avoid Americans heading to DC to exert their 2nd Amendment privileges over the enormous corruption of our governmental officials, not to mention that of their Afghan counterparts).
Sure, in 20 years there is now a whole generation of Afghan males that know nothing else but foreign meddling masquerading as Western "nation building to address America's 'war on terror'."
But there are enough Afghan males who remember the pre-2001 Taliban period with nostalgia, notwithstanding many of the Taliban's excesses, especially towards women. The twenty year presence of kuffar (infidel) military forces in their villages and towns was a serious affront to their carefully cultivated nang, and to their historical narrative of being "unconquerable." It was a source of tremendous sharm (shame) in a patriarchal male dominated society. Tremendous shame of an infidel military that included females! Frankly, for Afghans, any foreign military is an "infidel" one for this is a xenophobic warrior culture.
Western aid workers et al were so fixated of bringing immediate "equality" to Afghanistan. A land where, circa 2001, women weren't even allowed to leave their homes without a relative male escort and then had to be fully enveloped in their burkas to do so or face severe public lashings. Enough of these "aid" workers were genuine in their endeavors to help Afghan's females. But what most failed to appreciate is Afghanistan was/is one of the most male oriented societies in the world. Seeking to
