During this same day, there were several ominous articles about Afghanistan, yet the one article about Iraq was about a washing machine donation. This does hel

During this same day, there were several ominous articles about Afghanistan, yet the one article about Iraq was about a washing machine donation. This does help tell us something about what went wrong: For all its faults, the Iraq war was better politically conceived than the Afghanistan war - note that I do not say justified. Getting rid of the Sunni Ba'ath and giving power to Iraqi Shiites was a coherent and realistic political objective*, and once the new order was stabilized there was no real chance of going back (no, ISIS could never have realistically threatened Baghdad). The Afghanistan war never had a coherent political objective, or a realistic idea of the new order it meant to instill. Also, the US never bothered with cutting off the Taliban's support, but instead funded their main sponsor... Add in a spiteful withdrawal almost as if designed to maximize Taliban power and you get this. In general, political objectives are what decides if you can win these kinds of wars or whether they last forever, but the US let its generals run the war, and generals are bad at political and cultural understanding. P.S. Did I mention the USSR also did better? Its local flunkies actually held well after the USSR's withdrawal[0], it was only the USSR itself collapsing that eventually did them in. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Civil_War_(1989%E2%80%931992)#Battle_of_Jalalabad_(1989) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Civil_War_(1989%E2%80%9... * Yeah, yeah, America went in for democracy. Right. What do you think democracy means where the country had a Shiite majority? Besides, there's no other way to explain getting rid of all Ba'ath military officers on day 1.