Forever wars and the costs of collective forgetting.

Five years on, the greatest danger is not that a terrorist safe haven might once again emerge in Afghanistan. A graver threat comes from the risk of collective forgetting. Today, the longest American war rarely figures in public discourse. Americans occasionally acknowledge the noble sacrifices that thousands of U.S. service members made in the conflict. But the country moved on, eager to forget those final days. The riskiest form of forgetting would be for American leaders to fail to recall how perilous it proved to accept high costs and terrible losses, all in response to the fears of the moment. Remembering that will help them avoid future anguish.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    2·
    18 hours ago

    Lots of propaganda.

    Two decades of heroic effort had ended in shame.

    Heroic my ass, it was bullshit from day one and the whole world knew it.

    If American officials had known then what they know now, many of them—including me—would have argued more strongly for an earlier withdrawal.

    They wouldn’t. They knew Iraq didn’t have WMDs but invaded nonetheless. They knew Iran could block the Hormuz Strait but attacked nonetheless.

    Americans occasionally acknowledge the noble sacrifices that thousands of U.S. service members made in the conflict.

    Noble my ass.

    The United States had other ambitions in Afghanistan, as well, including a nation-building mission that aimed to establish a sustainable democracy.

    Bull-fucking-shit. A puppet regime is not a “sustainable democracy”

    [Kyle Carpenter] summed up his feelings about his service on behalf of Americans: “You are worth protecting, you are worth fighting for, you are worth time in a hospital bed and deep scars on my body.”

    The best soldiers are the ones that really believe the shit their superiors feed them, be like him, citizen!

    The cruelty of the policies is thrown into relief by the major strides in rights and opportunities that Afghan women in some parts of the country made in the decades that the Taliban were out of power.

    This was the only good thing to come out of the invasion, too bad it was just a glimpse of a better life for those women.

    Simply put, one reason the Americans did not leave Afghanistan earlier is that the U.S. military fights to win.

    [citation needed]

    It is deeply unsettling that thousands of service members who fought, were wounded, or lost friends in the war now see it as an unworthy endeavor.

    Reality crashing down on them isn’t “unsettling”

    Americans must not forget those changes of heart. They must remember what it feels like to look back at a war they once embraced and think, “If only I had known then what I know now.”

    I bet most of those didn’t change because of hindsight, but rather grew tired of it altogether.