Replies

Except we shouldn't have been caught off guard at all. 1993 WTC bombing, embassy bombings, USS Cole...the warning signs were there for almost a decade beforehand. Ahmad Shah Massoud (leader of the Northern Alliance) warned the world about the growing threat of terror in Afghanistan for years, and no one listened. After the Cole bombing he called his brother in London to ask about the US response and said "Haven't they realized yet?" He thought the US government was incredibly naïve not to have gotten the hint.
In April 2001 Massoud and Karzai spoke at the European Parliament and warned that al-Qaida was preparing an attack on the US larger than the embassy bombings. But again no one listened.
Had we sent in the Special Forces teams to the Northern Alliance before 9/11 when Massoud asked for help, they could've wiped out the Taliban then and there, 9/11 would never have happened, and Massoud would probably have been president of Afghanistan. But we did nothing, and AQ killed Massoud two days before 9/11.
US airstrikes and a couple hundred Afghans on horseback did overthrow the Taliban, but OBL fled to Pakistan and in the words of Charlie Wilson, we f---ed up the endgame. We didn't do a thing about Pakistan, and so the terrorists kept coming and coming over the border into Afghanistan in a constant game of whack-a-mole. Karzai said Obama deliberately ignored the terror havens in Pakistan (Massoud warned that if the US did not confront Pakistan, the problems of Afghanistan would become the problems of the world). Then we dumped wayyy too much money into Afghanistan (far more than a developing state could handle) including into the hands of shady warlords, and enabled corruption. The central government was dependent on the warlords to maintain order in the provinces, and had to pay them off to buy their loyalty lest they get a better deal from the Taliban. 30 years of war and poverty produced a highest bidder mentality where self-preservation and staying alive were the only things that mattered.
And then there's the CIA and opium. Today we have the opioid crisis and a massive heroin problem. 90% of the world's opium comes from Afghanistan (whereas pre-9/11 only ~30% did). Coincidence? Don't think so.