What’s really maddening is that Afghanistan was an exceptional, outstanding success for the US but people don’t know this because nobody tried to explain.
For 20 years, the US kept a very conflictive region stable at a very low cost. Pakistan was kept out of the hands of nutso fundies. No confrontation between India and Pakistan arose. And then the US very elegantly unloaded this whole issue on China and stepped away. It was masterful. For the textbooks.
But nobody tried to explain this to the people. All everybody saw was a pathetic, bungled withdrawal. And instead of the consciousness of victory Americans were hit by a feeling of frustration and defeat.
The withdrawal was bungled precisely because nobody ever explained to people that this was a triumphant operation. Americans thought it was shameful and pathetic, so it had to be rushed to satisfy their feeling of urgency in ending it.
It’s objectively a lot easier to explain what’s going on than create and execute such a long-term operation. But the failure happened precisely at the level of explanation. Our talking heads failed us. Stole our victory. We should be more upset about this.
And the reason the talking heads failed to explain Afghanistan, lying about women’s rights and gender-studies courses as the US goals in Afghanistan, is their deep investment into anti-American narratives. Both left and right-wing pundits revel in anti-US sentiment. As a result, they couldn’t bring themselves to talk about this amazing achievement. We need a new pundit class. The MSM, the YouTubers, the Twitter commentators. They all suck bullets. They all need to get fired.
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