STOP THE PRESSES!! GATHER THE KIDS!! PREEMPT REGULAR PROGRAMMING!!

Why all the excitement, you may ask. Well, the New York Times Editorial Board is out with an opinion that there is significant news about lessons learned from our 18+ year war in Afghanistan. Since at least our war on Vietnam, political and military leaders have championed the benefits of learning lessons from what has become our engagement in endless wars.

Concerning the war in Afghanistan, we’ve learned that 2,400+ US military personnel have been killed; 20,000+ have been wounded. Over 38,000+ Afghan civilians have been killed and countless wounded. We’ve spent over $1 trillion US taxpayer dollars on the war. The country is awash in refugees, the Taliban controls most of the country, and opium production has quadrupled. In September, the US Air Force dropped more bombs and munitions on Afghanistan than any other month in over a decade.

There are certainly lots of elements of what might be contained in “lessons”. These elements notwithstanding, the Editorial Board opines that, based on its examination of documents that American political and military leaders have consistently misled the public about the chances—or definition—of success in Afghanistan.

The Times based their opinion on, “The inspector general conducted <the> interviews between 2014 and 2018 with military and civilian officials who oversaw the war as part of a series of reports called “Lessons Learned.” There have been plenty of lessons to draw from the war in Afghanistan: the corrosive effects of corruption, the lack of strategy and accountability, civilian deference to assurances from military leaders and seductive idea that the United States — and not the Afghans — was in control of what was happening in the country. But there’s little evidence that the American government has learned them.

“And as long as the military and civilian leadership overseeing the war in Afghanistan keep insisting that their strategies are working, there’s little hope they ever will.”

Bottom line: There is no evidence that anyone in military or civilian leadership in the US has learned ANYTHING from this 18+ year humanitarian and moral disaster. Read the full opinion here.