Was the war in Afghanistan lost when it turned into a woke crusade?

How could the war in Afganistan have turned out better for America? The Taliban harbored terrorists who bombed a few of our most iconic buildings by exploiting serious security flaws in our airports. In a world of high technology and globalization, such orgaizations will always exist in the shadows somewhere. Did that justify our attempt to impose "Disney" style values on a backwards country trying to find its identity after centuries of opression?

Is it true that if the Afghan people really wanted to convert to western values, they would have? I suppose we wouldn't have had to fight them for 20 years to "save" them. Thoughts?

What should we do in the future in some similar situation? Thank you.

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SomeMichGuy · M

I wouldn't characterize this as "woke"...lol.

We had a perfect storm of stupidity sadly.

• We wanted to act, so we ignored the lessons we could have learned from the Soviet Union's attempt to take over/control Afghanistan.

• We had the oldest Sec'y of Defense ever (he'd been the *youngest*, years before...) who thought he was smarter than everyone in every room, who threw out the doctrine attributed to Colin Powell, which tried to encapsulate some critical lessons from Viet Nam:

[quote]The Powell Doctrine states that a list of questions all have to be answered affirmatively before military action is taken by the United States:

1) Is a vital national security interest threatened?

2) Do we have a clear attainable objective?

3) Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

4) Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?

5) Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

6) Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?

7) Is the action supported by the American people?

8) Do we have genuine broad international support?[2][/quote]

(Quote from the Wikipedia article.)

3) Even educated State Department or CIA regional/country experts seemed to have been excluded from the war planning, because of the incomprehensible inability to understand the importance of the local Islamic leaders...

These were NOT people asking to be imprinted with an American mindset. They were being held in the medieval period.