Be Real. Afghanistan Victory Would Have Taken Two Centuries.

That — after 20 years, 88 billion dollars spent on the Afghan army and militarized police, and 2.26 trillion spent on the war in total — the Afghan forces put up little to no resistance to the Taliban, shows that we were not even close to winning the war in Afghanistan. We were not close to having an Afghan government that could defend itself without U.S. military intervention. Our withdrawal resulted in the immediate collapse of the government and the takeover of the entire country by the Taliban. Let’s be real, this war was lost a long time ago and nowhere near success.

During the collapse, I was scrolling through Twitter, and people were sharing articles from about two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago, and so on. They used sources on the ground in Afghanistan ranging from U.S. officers, to U.S. military leaders, to U.S. grunts, to ambassadors, to analysts, to Afghans. They all described the myriad of ways that the Afghan government, military, and police were corrupt to the hilt.

Many were in the Afghan military to make money rather than to defend their country. The count of the men was exaggerated by tens of thousands, if not more, so that officers could steal the pay of these non-existent men. Afghanis would take the equipment given to them to defend their country and sell it. They would falsely claim things were broken just to get a copy of the item. The Afghan government was too corrupt to be effective.