I’m rereading that statement made upthread:

“The United States was not able to achieve its mission in Afghanistan,” he explained. “The mission in Afghanistan was to defeat the Taliban and establish a democratic government that could command the legitimacy of the Afghan people and control the country.”

And if that is the mission you think we went in to accomplish, rather than catching/killing OBL and the Al-Q leadership, then you have to be truly disassociated from reality to think it was still an achievable goal.

“Defeat the Taliban”? We whiffed on that at Tora Bora and had been chasing our tails ever since. To truly defeat the Taliban would have meant chasing them in to Pakistan or forcing the Pakistani gov’t to hand them over, neither scenario remotely plausible so long as we wanted to avoid escalating things to potential nuclear exchanges. By all indications, the Taliban recovered years ago and has only been growing stronger ever since.

“Establish a democratic government”? Well, we did achieve that…at first. And then we watched as the new government became a den of thievery and graft, culminating in a reelection rife with allegations of ballot-stuffing and intimidation, the result of which was a deeply unpopular president “winning” when his opponent in the run-off decided to drop out at the last second. For those who remember their history, it was our continued support of the South Vietnamese “President” that ultimately bit us in the ass.

“That could command the legitimacy of the Afghan people and control the country”? HA! Once a government loses legitimacy, as it did in the eyes of many when Karzai “won” a second term, it’s difficult to impossible to ever regain it. And every indication is that the only way to maintain control over anything was through money. Want the warlords to stop fucking with you? Pay them off. Want the Army to act like they give a shit? Pay them. When a government and its legitimacy is built upon money, then it will last right up until the cash stops flowing.

The truth is…the game was rigged from the start.