'..In September 2001, we had 400 to 500 al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan (who were loyal to Osama bin Laden). Plus you had the "foreign fighters” and sleeper cells in different places in the Middle East. If you look at it today, al-Qaida has armies of thousands in places like the Sahel, in Yemen and in Syria. The Islamic State emerged out of that group. So, who’s winning just by the mere numbers and the facts on the ground? We spent four or five trillion dollars on the war on terrorism and two invasions of two countries.
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We lost our credibility – not only in the Arab world, but worldwide. The U.S. was always saying, we’re here for human rights, we’re here for liberty. We want people to have self-determination. And then we basically started to do the same thing that people in the world see in the Chinese government or the North Korean government – we tortured our detainees..''..Several U.S. administrations had an idea of how Afghanistan ought to be, but did not understand how Afghanistan is. I think this was one of our biggest problems.
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..Afghanistan is a tribal country in so many different regions, with different ethnic groups. Most Afghanis didn’t trust the government because of corruption. When they had a problem, they didn't go to the government. They went to the jirga and they went to the elders to solve a lot of these issues. That is an opportunity that we missed. We would have needed a policy based on the culture of the place, based on the culture in Kabul and the culture in Herat, the culture in Mazar-e-Sharif, but not based on the culture of Washington. I think this was one of the biggest problems.
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I think we can talk of a national failure, a national loss. This loss is because of two Democratic administrations and two Republican administrations. Every administration made a lot of mistakes in this. The Bush administration made a lot of mistakes in moving much-needed resources to focus on Iraq and then focusing on Iraq. The Obama administration even sent more troops in and, for eight years, was hoping that something miraculous would happen. The Trump administration is responsible for not understanding the situation at all..
..I think we should have left the country already in 2003. At that time, it was clear that we had lost this war.
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..In September 2001, we had 400 to 500 al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan (who were loyal to Osama bin Laden). Plus you had the "foreign fighters” and sleeper cells in different places in the Middle East. If you look at it today, al-Qaida has armies of thousands in places like the Sahel, in Yemen and in Syria. The Islamic State emerged out of that group. So, who’s winning just by the mere numbers and the facts on the ground? We spent four or five trillion dollars on the war on terrorism and two invasions of two countries.
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..Before 9/11, we still had diplomatic representations in the region – in Libya, in Syria, in Yemen. Our embassy in Sanaa in Yemen was one of the major embassies in the Arabian Peninsula. We had some kind of working relationship with several actors in the region. All of these embassies don’t exist anymore. That is catastrophic..
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We lost our credibility – not only in the Arab world, but worldwide. The U.S. was always saying, we’re here for human rights, we’re here for liberty. We want people to have self-determination. And then we basically started to do the same thing that people in the world see in the Chinese government or the North Korean government – we tortured our detainees. The U.S. administration even lied about it for years – they didn’t even tell the truth to their own citizens. So, after 9/11, we not only failed in trying to know our enemy better. We also forgot about who we are.'
- Ali Soufan (former FBI agent,
source, September 6, 2021)
Context '..Are Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld any less of war criminals than Hussein?'Afghanistan: Last US military flight departs ending America's longest war(US National Security Archives) - ' ..The U.S. government under four presidents misled the American people for nearly two decades .. deeply flawed Pentagon strategy..''Secrecy – the first refuge of incompetents – must be at a bare minimum in a democratic society..''The United States .. a fragile democracy.''..the US military’s inability to engage in nation-building..'(The U.S. out of the Middle East) - '..Syria .. exit plan .. the Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Forces .. the least apart in terms of their differing visions for the country..'(Afghanistan, Realism & Restraint) - '..the Afghan war alone drove [US] decline.' - Afghanistan Buries Another Empire(Peace) - '..Sadly, my generation had to relearn the lessons of Vietnam in Iraq and Afghanistan .. to do everything in our power to avoid more wars..''..Positive Peace as a holistic, systemic framework.'Nuremberg chief prosecutor .. his motto is “law not war”..'In The Electric Universe a Future of Peace and Love'..tell your boss you think the company has a love deficit.' - Hamel