Afghanistan’s Collapse Wasn’t Quick Really

David Ignatius: “The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban was like watching the collapse of the twin towers. In an instant, the edifice crumbled into a pile of rubble.”

“But it didn’t happen quickly, really. The structure of the Kabul government has been rotting from within for all 20 years of the United States’ war. And every U.S. commander knew its weakness. They worried about the corruption and incompetence of the government, devised elaborate strategies to fix it, kept convincing themselves they were making progress. Hope is not a strategy, as every commander knows. In this case, it was.”

“Too often, the generals brought the media along with them in this exercise of self-delusion. Looking back over a dozen years of my own reporting from Afghanistan, that’s one painful recognition. These columns often expressed skepticism about the larger enterprise, but they kept recording, year after year, the generals’ ambitions for success. It wasn’t a big lie so much as a series of little bubbles of false optimism.”