LogFAQs > #957220871

America succeeded in its goal to get rid of Osama Bin Laden, but was unsuccessful in its attempts to tear Afghanistan away from the Taliban. The latter was never a realistic goal. Had the troops left after getting Bin Laden, it absolutely would have been a victory for the US. (But people made money off of the war, so it kept on going.)

It's pretty crazy. America got Bin Laden. America arrested the cofounder of the Taliban. (He was released and is now president of Afghanistan.) And America inflicted 20,000 enemy casualties to the 6,000 casualties it suffered. Yet, it's a loss of objectives. It's like being in a boxing match where you win every round except the last one and the judges rule in favor of the opponent. It's sheer madness. But that's what happens when you're fighting to take a country and you're unable to do so.

If this war hadn't been run by profiteers. If they'd killed Bin Laden, told the Taliban, "fuck your shit, we'll go home if you give us our prisoners of war back," it would have been a dominant US victory. But we stayed for reasons we can only speculate as to. Did the US stay to strip the area of its minerals? Did they think they could realistically secure the region? Was it just a matter of people profiting from supplying the war? We'll never know.

It was capitalism America lost to, not the Taliban.