After two decades in Afghanistan overseen by four different presidents culminated in Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal, reports are coming out from the Inspector General's office about how the Afghanistan war was a massive failure.
The Washington Examiner goes through all of the worst aspects of the report:
After spending $145 billion to create a self-sustaining government and rid the nation of terrorists, the experiment failed.
"The United States sought to build stable, democratic, representative, gender-sensitive, and accountable Afghan governance institutions. It failed," said the report.
For emphasis, SIGAR promoted this quote from Chris Mason, associate professor of national security at the U.S. Army War College: "U.S. efforts to build and sustain Afghanistan's governing institutions were a total, epic, predestined failure on par with the same efforts and outcome in the Vietnam war, and for the same reasons."
"Total, epic, and predestined failure."
It's been clear from nearly beginning that the stated purpose of the Afghanistan war, while possibly admirable, was unachievable.
And today we have nothing to show for it except thousands of lost lives.
While there were many reasons for the Afghan government to fail after Biden withdrew U.S. troops in a disaster that sparked his drop in public approval polls, the audit seized on one key theme. The Afghans didn't believe Washington would ever leave.
"The Afghan government failed to recognize that the United States would actually leave. Over nearly 20 years and three U.S. presidencies, the United States had vacillated on the issue of military withdrawal," said the report titled "Why the Afghan Government Collapsed."
It added, "The result was that the Afghan government was fundamentally unprepared to manage the fight against the Taliban as the United States military and its contractors withdrew."
Years of talking about withdrawal with no action had convinced many that America would never leave.
Then Biden came in and pulled the plug so quickly that there was no chance at all for the people in Afghanistan to prepare to go it alone.
Many of our sons and daughters died in that war.
Died trying to protect America from a repeat of 9/11.
Died to make the world a safer place.
Died believing that their commanding officers had a plan.
