I’m seeing a lot of bitter complaints on how the U. S.’s leaving Afghanistan will allow the entire country to come under Taliban control again. Can someone please explain to me what would have needed to happen for the Taliban not to be in a position to take control of Afghanistan? They are, in fact, a native Afghan movement after all.
Did they envision our continuing to occupy Afghanistan forever? How about Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria? Did they think that was acceptable to the American people? What gave them that impression?
The bigger question is, Why do Americans continue to support wars of aggression?
Not one of the countries you listed attacked us or any of our allies. Each invasion was unprovoked. Aside from Somalia (still fighting), which had UN authorization, there was no international authorization for any of them. They each have the same status as the German and Russian invasion of Poland–a war crime.
And why do Americans turn a blind eye to the devastation wreaked by our military, devastation inflicted mostly on civilians and civilian infrastructure? Using smart bombs, we leveled Mosul and Raqqa and other cities house by house. The result was the same as the carpet bombing of Dresden and other German and Japanese cities. As many as one million civilians may have died in our wars, and millions more are homeless and/or refugees.
The enormity of what we have done as a whole people is simply ignored. How is the wanton destruction of Libya any different than what happened at Auschwitz? “We came, we saw, he died,” said a laughing Hillary Clinton.
Now Iran and Venezuela are on the table.
I’ve referred to it as the “Batman theory of American foreign policy”. Maybe the Spiderman theory. U. S. power alone gives us the authority and responsibility to wage war on anyone we don’t like.
Dogooders have had control of our foreign policy for decades and their version of doing good is use military force to impose their wills on other people.
BTW.
Mosul 2015
Mosul 2018
Your characterization of our actions in Mosul is an exaggeration. We didn’t level it but it has, indeed, been leveled.