Group items tagged

"To use a few of the catchwords of that moment, it transformed nothing, empowered no one, stabilized and economically uplifted not a single Iraqi. It just sat there empty, dark, and unused in the middle of the desert. Like the chickens, we were plucked. "

"The distinction of being a "failed state" is inarguably damning, but the 12 indicators factored into this determination highlight how complex it is to measure the weakness of states. A wide range of issues -- wars, hunger, brutal dictatorships, child mortality, economic failure, mass epidemics, political infighting, and the devastating aftermath of natural disasters -- push countries to the brink of failure, or right over the edge. "

Afghanistan is the 7th worst failed state in the world almost a dozen years after the US invasion and the American taxpayers' trillion dollar price tag.

"On May 20, 2010, General Stanley McChrystal, then the American commander in Afghanistan, referred to the operation in Marjah, Helmand-an operation earlier touted as a potential turning point for U.S. Afghan counterinsurgency (COIN)-as a "bleeding ulcer." [1] Immediately, we were reminded of a similar expression from an earlier Afghan War. On February 1986, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev speaking to the 27th General Congress of the Communist Party posited that the Soviet war in Afghanistan had become a "bleeding wound." Was McChrystal's comment just an unfortunate choice of words or a harbinger that the United States faced a Soviet-style disaster in Afghanistan?"

At last, a whiff of diplomatic candor about the Western failure in Afghanistan that I covered in "Funding the Enemy."