Here’s a rather cynical assessment of the 20 years American adventure in Afghanistan by Sumantra Maitra at The National Interest:
The American imperial project in Afghanistan was a bunch of NGOs, and contractors in the defense department making money, and average men and women losing lives for nothing. A random bloke from South Carolina wouldn’t have gone to Kandahar, to start a shop, get married and settle down for the next century at least . . . thereby making the project doomed from the start. There is no dedicated civil service and the higher-education system currently in the United States that is comparable to what the utterly disciplined Victorian public schooling produced during the height of the British empire, which drove proud generations of Britains to ensure that the empire remained a martial but overall liberalizing force, to have the requisite brains trust under the purest form of meritocracy, something, incidentally, that China is doing now promoting its Belt-and-Road project and debt-trap diplomacy. There are hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians working from Central Asia to Africa, starting businesses, and managing constructions, although they have not gone taken the exact same path as imperial Britain—at least not yet.
An empire needs two things, material prosperity, and ideological zeal. The average American lacked both in the last twenty years.
That’s not far from how I see it and it’s not limited to our “imperial project” in Afghanistan. It’s true of everything in government from federal right down to local. To not recognize that is to not understand how our government actually functions.
We are in dire need of reform but there are too many people whose livelihoods are completely dependent on government for it to take place.
“the higher-education system currently in the United States that is comparable to what the utterly disciplined Victorian public schooling produced during the height of the British empire”
I read that last night, and frankly I could not, and still cannot, understand it. It is too wrong-headed for words. Until recently, the Ruling Class in Britain (the only ones who went to college or even public school) were very well-educated, albeit classically. Almost everyone could read and write Latin (some had Greek), knew quite a bit of mathematics and science, and all were deeply versed in history, European at least. They were believing, practicing Christians (Protestants), and they were patriots, and loyal to the Queen. Aside from the oppressed Irish, they ruled a relatively homogeneous population.
The British working population was, however, impoverished. According to AJP Taylor, the English workers has less food, coal, clothing, etc. prior to WW I than under rationing during WW I. Large numbers of impoverished working Brits left for the colonies or US to improve their lots. My grandparents did. Read Tolkien’s biography sometime. The workers were followed by their rulers from home.
The American Ruling Class is barely literate, with comprehensive arrogance, superstition and delusion substituting for actual knowledge. It is a blatantly disloyal Ruling Class that is parasitic on the American people, and that incites hatred between the races to control us. They knowingly and deliberately destroyed our manufacturing for private gain. They run losing wars against ragtag militias for no purpose whatsoever, and they continually foment wars with other super powers, fortunately failing, especially this week in Ukraine. They’ll probably give Taiwan another go soon.
Reform is impossible, but actual political and economic collapse that erases our system isn’t. Eisenhower’s military-industrial and university-government complexes and their Congressional/Civil Service/Military clients/payees get rich of the endless wars and pseudo-science. There is no reason for the Rulers to change anything. They are going to promote chaos in our streets, and use it clamp down harder on us.