Sunday, May 24, 2026

Arrogance: Experts summarize the reasons for the “failure” of the United States in Afghanistan

  • Experts described the reasons for the failure of the United States in Afghanistan.
  • They consider lies, arrogance and arrogance as factors.
  • The American presence in Afghanistan tramples on the Afghan sense of identity.

Lies, arrogance, arrogance and self-deception: American experts are calculating the reasons for the failure of the United States in the two-year war in Afghanistan, claiming that it was doomed to fail from the beginning, comparable to the American experience in Vietnam.

On Thursday, the official U.S. monitoring agency for operations in Afghanistan stated that it is too early to call the war a complete failure because the government still has a chance to defeat the Taliban, a hardline Islamist expelled by the United States and its allies. November 2001.

Read | Please show your passport: Afghans wait in line for escape lifeline

But he said that the US military that will leave in August will leave behind a corrupt and unmotivated Afghan security force and a government that can easily succumb to the insurgents.

John Sopko, Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan, said that the “big problem” is “After all, with $86 billion and 20 years of funding, why do we see such a bad result?”

Sopko’s congressional mission is to monitor the effectiveness of military and development efforts. He said in a discussion with reporters on Thursday that he used two words to describe the American experience.

“One is arrogance. We can somehow turn the desolate country in 2001 into a little Norway.”

“The other thing is a lie. We exaggerated, we exaggerated, our general did it, our ambassador did it, all our officials did it, to Congress and the American people, about’we just turned the corner, We are ready to turn.'”

Read | Thousands of Afghan families fled fighting in former Taliban fortress

Short-term results

He said that the US military only focuses on short-term achievements and constantly changes its goals for better.

“Every time we go in, the U.S. military will change the goal posts, making it easier to show success. Finally, when they can’t even do this, they sorted the evaluation tools,” he recalled.

He said that Washington believes that “we will build a strong central government.”

“This is a mistake… If you talk to any experts on Afghanistan, they will say that this is a mistake. The problem is, we did not listen to any of them.”

“There is no doubt that we lost the war,” Carter Marksian, a former senior Pentagon official who served in Afghanistan for many years, wrote in a newly published book.

Read | George W. Bush warns of the “bad” outcome of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan

He said that the Taliban showed more willingness to fight against “invaders,” while the people believed that the government relied on non-Muslim foreigners.

Marcassia wrote: “The American presence in Afghanistan is itself a sense of Afghan identity, which includes national pride, a long history of fighting against outsiders, and a religious commitment to defend their homeland.”

“We believe that everything is possible in Afghanistan-defeating the Taliban or letting the Afghan government stand on its own-but it may not be the case.”

Experts say that from the beginning, the corruption of the government and security forces, with the help of huge sums of money invested by the United States, eroded any sense of commitment to Kabul.

Full of power

At the same time, even the Taliban suffer from dislike and mismanagement. The Taliban’s motives are even stronger, religion and hatred of “infidels”.

Sopko said that if the Afghan army does not pay wages, does not have food, and their ammunition and vehicle fuel are all stolen by corrupt officials, no one can expect the Afghan army to fight.

“Police and soldiers do not want to risk their lives for a government that is corrupt and easy to ignore them,” Marksian said.

A Human Rights Watch report this month stated that the atrocities and human rights violations committed by the Afghan government and the U.S. military have undermined many of the positive social and economic development benefits brought by Americans from the very beginning.

Human Rights Watch cited “American generals’ indifference or indifference to the atrocities committed by the Afghan army, the U.S. military and the CIA.”

The organization also stated that the number of civilian casualties caused by U.S. air strikes is underestimated, such as the 2009 bombing that killed 100 civilians in western Farah Province, weakening the potential American support in rural areas.

“During these 20 years, the United States has tended to put short-term military interests above the establishment of a true democratic system and the protection of human rights, which has seriously undermined the United States’ mission and the entire nation-building effort after 2001,” Human Rights Watch said.

Sopko said that with its withdrawal, the United States has left a country still suffering from severe power shortages and a large-scale, unregulated trade in opium and heroin, and US officials have just “resolved these problems.”

“Don’t believe what the generals, ambassadors or government personnel tell you, saying we will never do this again. This is exactly what we said after Vietnam,” Sopko said.

“Look, we did Iraq. We did Afghanistan. We will do it again. We really need to think and learn from the 20 years in Afghanistan.”

Don’t miss a story. Choose from our newsletter Send the news you want directly to your inbox.



Source link

Related articles

spot_imgspot_img