https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/12/the...e-problem/

"...In his latest essay, Stephen Walt raises a few fundamental questions. Why did the United States (and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) imagine they could turn Afghanistan into a modern, Western-style democracy? Why did the Taliban consistently out-fight the Afghan National Security Forces? Finally, why did the war continue for so long?

The answers to the last two questions are, as I mentioned above, that Afghanistan never had a single identity, so naturally the multi-ethnic Afghan forces kept losing to the primarily Pashtun Taliban; Secondly, the war continued for so long because the American ideological brass was thoroughly detached from their own countrymen. The first question needs to be studied more, as that is the ultimate lesson from this 20-year fiasco.

Afghanistan (and Iraq, Libya, and Syria) are not isolated debacles, and it would be foolish to consider them so. Fiascos like these will keep happening for as long as we harbor the delusion that all problems in the world are the United States’s concern, and deserve our blood and treasure.

They are a symptom of a far more entrenched modern and elite worldview, which is essentially radical in nature, believes in a historical arc of progress, and is fundamentally opposed to the guidance of American betters ranging from George Washington to John Quincy Adams. They warned America against foreign overextension and exhaustion, which results in internal social incoherence and collapse."