Here’s why I think we were doomed.
The AFG was monumentally corrupt. So corrupt that the money we provided to pay their military was siphoned off while their military fought without getting paid. Many Afghans got very rich while others fought and died.
I don't know that it is possible to go into a 3rd world country with 1st world money and not corrupt it, frankly.
Of course, the AFG was not even included in the February 2020 negotiations we held with the Taliban to determine the future of Afghanistan. To repeat, we didn’t even invite the AFG to join in the negotiations to figure out what was going to happen to their country. That’s a pretty big wtf moment.
To the extent that someone should have been representing the actual Afghan people at the Doha negotiations, there was no one. If the AFG had been there, there still wouldn't have been anyone representing the people.
So when it is time for us to leave, and we are depending on the corrupt AFG to hold things together until we’ve crossed the horizon, fighting and dying to keep the Taliban off, guess what they did? They shanked us. Like we did to them in Doha. I doubt they forgot.
As per the Doha Agreement, the Taliban actually did negotiate a lasting peace, they just did it city by city, buying off the leaders without a fight. We got outmaneuvered.
Meanwhile the actual Afghans are screwed.
