Site Overlay

The Real Lesson from Afghanistan

I think both Trump and Biden did the right thing to decide and to actually pull out of Afghanistan. I wish the US left the country much earlier than today. Biden got the blame today for bad handling but he was at least partly shouldering the responsibilities created and left by previous administrations.

China did this one thing smarter than the US: After Mao Zedong, started from Deng Xiaoping, China figured out that it was a waste of time and resource to export revolution. To this day people in Washington have yet to come to the rude awakening that it is a waste of time and resources to export democracy (or country building, mode of governance, moral principles and national security).

Instead of waiting for decades and spending trillions dollars to pull out, the US should have instilled the much needed self discipline to invade any other country for any cause, no matter how noble it may sound. Congress should set a rule or pass a law to say that any military actions overseas, if deemed absolutely necessary by the administration, should be budgeted on a weekly basis, meaning troops are only authorized for one week overseas at a time as the default, and the administration must ask for a new authorization of another week. The maximum length should be one month.