Leaving Afghanistan Like a Thief in the Night
Well at least it wasn’t like Vietnam, with the left-behind hanging off the helicopter skids. This time we left without telling anyone. Why go through the agony of a public display?
What the hell, we’re gone
Don’t get me wrong. I thought we should have never gone in except for a quick and punishing retaliatory strike, but then I hadn’t the foresight of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld is recently dead, so he cannot defend himself, but there are facts and the facts do not speak well for America—not then and certainly not now.
Secretaries of Defense (in more honest times we called them Secretaries of War) are largely architects. They dream up, plan and then design the machinery of war. When things go wrong, just as when buildings collapse, they are tasked with responsibility for the faulty plans and lives lost.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan the collateral damage was immense. Functioning nations were left in ruins, no matter how we may have criticized their governance . We came, we sa…