Fred Reed on pulling out of Afghanistan

So why did this happen?  Why another rush to the exit as the world laughs?  Which the world is doing.  In a sentence, because if you do something stupid and it doesn’t work, it probably won’t work when you do it again. 

The psychological explanation is slightly more complex. Vietnam is a good example. America invaded a country of another race, utterly different culture, practicing religions GIs had never heard of, speaking a language virtually no Americans spoke, a country exceedingly sick of being invaded by foreigners, most of them white.  In Afghanistan the designated evil was terrorism, in Viet Nam communism, but the choice of evils doesn’t matter.  You have to tell the rubes at home something noble sounding.

~ Fred Reed, "Despair in the Empire of Graveyards," LewRockwell.com, August 21, 2021