There is also a brisk traffic in arms: US manufacturers recently announced the sale to _____ of 24 new F-16 fighter jets and other equipment, worth an estimated $3.2 billion. Steven Cook at the Council on Foreign Relations has published a ‘contingency planning memorandum’ in favour of continued support to the regime, which, as he describes it, ‘has helped create a regional order that makes it relatively inexpensive for the United States to exercise its power’. 

I'm so sick of the "responsible" anti-war blather that the US could never win the war or that "America is not capable of 'nation-building'." 

The US was never interested in nation-building in Afghanistan; it was interested in exercising its power. It won the war easily, but victory wasn't enough. Trying to work on the cheap, predictably, it chose bribery. Laziness and cheapness over time is saving $5 to spend 10, as corruption reinforces itself, undermining the state in the US as in Afghanistan. 

Meanwhile this is one of the "serious" Americans:

"While the U.S. war in Vietnam was a pointless tragedy that resulted in untold human misery, it was not totally absurd for U.S. decision-makers to believe that communism was an existential threat worth fighting. The same cannot be said for the war in Afghanistan—"   

The Quincy Institute is an American organization for an American audience.

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Bessner previously