By Tracy Wilkinson
“There’s a dark irony here,” said Benjamin Friedman, policy director with Defense Priorities, a Washington group that supports U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Despite the tragic and lethal messiness of the last days, he said, Afghanistan may be more at peace soon than in a long time — although widespread repression of minorities, women, dissidents and others will undoubtedly be reimposed. But the military, civilian officials and experts will have to be held accountable, he said, “for how they got it so wrong.”
“You could not imagine a more stunning rebuke for the U.S. nation-building project,” he said. “We were building a failed state, not fixing a failed state.”
A state, he added, that was overly reliant on foreign aid and shaped by a history of armed faction and competing tribal power centers.