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I think that the Afghanistan war/occupation is not discussed enough. Perhaps we are all so used to government failure that we just nod our heads and ignore what happened over there.
The US occupied that entire country for 20 years. It spent an estimated $2.3 trillion. When the US went in there, the place was controlled by authoritarian Islamists who oppress women. Today, the place is controlled by authoritarian Islamists who oppress women.
People's sense of what is important is so delusional sometimes. Here in the US, people often argue over minor issues like who gets to go into what bathroom, or whether there are enough strong women in television shows. Meanwhile, the US taxpayer spent $2.3 trillion on Afghanistan, there was a major opportunity to actually do some real feminism, to actually reshape Afghan culture to make it more liberal, and it just didn't happen. I'm not sure how much it was even attempted.
I get that the original reason for occupying Afghanistan was 9/11, but the US was in there for 20 years. There is no way you can tell me that you can't reshape a society of just 40 million people when you're there for 20 years, you spend $2.3 trillion, and you have overwhelming military force. Societies have been forcefully reshaped in the past and they will be in the future. Take Germany or Japan for example.
Did the US even try over there? Was the whole thing just an excuse to put taxpayer money into rich people's pockets? People just nod and smile about the whole thing, like "of course we spent $2.3 trillion and got nothing for it other than neutralizing Al Qaeda, that's just how the government works". It's kind of weird to me that there isn't more outrage about the whole thing. Neutralizing Al Qaeda did not use up 20 years and $2.3 trillion. One can argue about whether foreign interventionism and nation building is good or bad, and there are good cases to be made for both sides, but that's not really my subject matter. My point is that since there was a supposed attempt at nation building over there, we at least should have gotten something out of it. If the taxpayer supports you to the tune of $2.3 trillion, and you achieve no nation building after 20 years despite having overwhelming military force, then it seems to me that the taxpayer has been massively ripped off.
I've personally been arguing for decades that 9-11 killed the United States and the $2.3 trillion (pretty sure that's a low-ball number, like we blew past that in 2005) was the price we paid for our own funeral. Every disaster after that -- 2008 collapse, various infrastructure disasters caused by natural events, Covid Authoritarianism, drug and homelessness crises, race and culture wars, political intransigence and overall cultural atomization, are downstream effects of the US obliterating its wealth, military and moral clarity on two unwinnable wars that didn't even relate to the initial injury. My outrage kicked off, in steering-wheel-pounding-earnestness, during Colin Powell's testimony to the UN security Council in 2003. It was the moment I knew we were completely screwed. By (NDAA) 2012 I had completely given up on any hope we'd ever revert to sanity.
As for why isn't there more outrage...well, the same reasons as always: people are mostly level-1 NPCs who can't remember (or don't know) history and are distracted by whatever the latest water-cooler-MSNBC/FOX outrage is. NPCs can't connect dots, they consume slop and regurgitate the opinions they've been handed. "We slit our own throat on the altar of 9-11" is not an opinion I see too much in the wild and not at all in mass media spaces.
I've wondered for a while whether bin Laden realized the sheer magnitude of his own success. From what I can tell he didn't talk about it much.
Depends on what he considered a success. From his original letter to America, his goal was to get us to fuck off.
I love it!
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