No one has ever really tamed Afghanistan and no one will.
We should never have tried.
“No one has ever really tamed Afghanistan and no one will.
We should never have tried.” (Lurkinanloomin, post 41)
Wrong.
The British went in to prevent Imperial Russians from doing so, which would threaten the British Raj in India. When the Russians decided to go elsewhere, the British left undefeated.
The USSR had nearly finished off Afghanistan, when the US began supplying Stingers. Negated Soviet air power; the situation became untenable and the USSR backed away.
“It was too hard, so we should never have tried” sounds more like excuse-mongering on the school playground; it does illustrate how immature and impatient Americans really are. The worthiness of a goal and the difficulty of reaching it are two different things.
Concerning the lack of patience, Americans need to recalibrate their understanding of long-term and short-term. To us, long-term barely means the next Presidential election. To the Islamics, short-term is anything less than 500 years (give or take).
And we need to get over our isolationist, more-moral-than-thou attitudes. We might find being the World Police disagreeable, but if we don’t do it someone else will, and we won’t like that arrangement any better.