if this were the case, then the USA would have actually benefited from these wars. you ascribe far too much competence to our ruling class
The actual reason is more like an unholy mishmash of the sunk cost fallacy and the ever-present need to pad the pockets of Boeing and Raytheon
"if this were the case, then the USA would have actually benefited from these wars."
I don't see where that conclusions comes from unless you fall for the same mistake you mention - adress too much competence. Also the US ruling class can loose a gamble.
Strategic influence, military bases on the ground (vs. Iran) etc.
So if one would characterize complicated geo politics as gamble, I think it is fair to say the gamble was lost, considering the huge ressources spend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military...
It boxes Iran in, it taps on China's exposed western shoulder and borders the stans that buffer Russia's soft underbelly and it's close enough to other established air bases that can provide logistical support.
Better yet, if you do manage to capture it, it's has some of the most favorable geography for repelling invasions of any country. If America was fully established there, getting it out would be pretty much impossible.
It's not a huge shocker it was seen as a prize worthy of an expensive gamble at a time when America felt it was at the peak of its power. Anyone remember fukuyama's "the end of history"? America had a pretty severe case of hubris in the 90s/early 00s.
The war was lost a while ago, of course. It's really hard to admit defeat however, and there's always a tinge of hope it might be turned around, a disbelief that the American military could suffer defeat, so, of course it dragged on.
Anybody who has worked on a huge, vastly expensive high profile project knows that inertia can drag it on for years after it's clear to everyone that it's dead in the water.
Afghanistan would be good to have in a war with Iran, but I honestly think that the opportunity for that is gone. AFAIK Iraq has gone from being a US client state to nominally independent, and Russia’s plan to prop up the Assad regime worked out very well for them.
Well, sure, if you believe that the powers that be were acting for the benefit of their country rather than for themselves.
Making an investment is not the same as assuring returns on investment.
>but there is overwhelming evidence that the purpose of US intervention in the middle east is almost purely for reasons of power and resource
Sure, I'll collect my check at the pump, I guess.
>and this has been obvious to scholars and even casual laymen observers for nearly half a century
I think you're missing the meaning of my original post, which was a comment about people who experienced war in Afghanistan feel about it. You're welcome to contort that into whatever point about human rights, "America is bad", whatever point you feel like. Like I said originally. I don't care.
> Does anyone in America actually care about what style of government Afghanistan adopts? Apparently these people in DC think they do.
I had dinner with the ambassador to the Taliban once at Yale, back in 2000. He said they banned TVs because there wasn't any Pashtun programming, so they were effectively just banning porn. He was accompanied by this very nice lady, Lailia Helms, who was the granddaughter of the former king of Afghanistan and married to the son of the former CIA director, Richard Helms. Weird.
Outside of the excessive dev costs, and high price tags of these things, ongoing, year after year, institutional knowledge of "how to construct weaponry", and "how to test / build" the same is absolutely vital.
You absolutely cannot be in a position where no company and employees exist, which knows these things.
The cannot be overstated. Imagine a war breaks out, and now you try to build ... missiles. You have no tooling, no factory, no employees which have ever done so, and no supply chains either. Nor even engineered, first step designs!
Now, I agree things are not perfect, but something must be in place. Something ongoing.
This same logic holds with the military too. You want to lose a war? Have a no standing military, or one which is never deployed.
You need trained, experienced troops, which will train other troops if a massive war breaks out and your numbers swell. You need experienced persons to lead, which have not been trained in isolation.
Canada tries to solve this, as much as possible by peacekeeping. It's not perfect though, blue hats don't often engage in large scale actions.
Point in all this is, trying to pick just, humanitarian causes for troop deployment, and weaponry usage in the field, and to keep supply chains alive, is difficult, yet is literally essential if you want to have a real defense potential.
Or should the US, the West, just degrade their military, and hope for the best?
(Canada was in Afghanistan for more than a decade.)
The receiving end however might hold a different point of view.
If we demobilized, we'd probably never really need to remobilize. (What, are the Nazis going to rise again?) But if we did, we could.
This is a very 1990s/2000s point of view. We have a real global competitor now. China's military spending is rising faster than their fast-rising GDP. Some recent war games exercises suggest that the US could already be in losing position in a conventional war with China [1].
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/china-u...
Not even our generals are stupid enough to get in a war with China. (Our politicians probably are, but they're not in charge.) They'd probably take all of our Pacific Islands, and they would definitely sink all our carriers. It will take a few years for the Pentagon to forget the asskickings we've received recently. They're searching for nations smaller and weaker than Syria; China is off the list completely. Even though we spend far more on the military than they do.
However, we don't have to get in a war with China. We owe them trillions of dollars. We're probably not going to start out by straight-up defaulting, but there are all sorts of things we could fiddle with to put the hurt on them. What are they going to do in response? Stop exporting us lots of crap? That would be good for American workers. Maybe they'll hack American firms' insecure shit more? Ditto.
We would live happier, healthier, and more prosperous lives if we stopped viewing every challenge through a military lens. Especially since our military is incompetent to achieve any goal through military action.
Besides, the idea that starting wars is an effective method to prevent losing wars is completely illogical.
True, but the power and resources for a few corporations and individuals for sure! But not American people. Nah, not the common man.
You might want to ponder what propaganda you have been falling for.
No doubt Afghanistan has resources but I'd like to see supporting evidence that it was the reason for invasion.