Nation-building was not the reason we were in Afghanistan and it's a straw man argument to suggest we were. We had selfish goals, and were not the worse for it. We were there to remove Afghanistan as a terror safe haven. Building a better Afghanistan was the cherry, not the cake.
"President Biden says we were there to punish the Taliban for 9/11 and to get bin Laden. Mission accomplished. Time to leave. President Trump thought the same. But the U.S. presence was doing far more than providing the conditions for girls to be educated, minorities to be free of persecution, and all to live in a non-medieval state. The troops were also preventing Afghanistan from reverting to being a base for al Qaeda. The terror group that attacked us on 9/11 has been set back for 20 years, but the triumphant return of the Taliban will prove a boon. Blood-thirsty jihadists from around the world will flock to Afghanistan and many others will be lifted by the example of the Islamists who defeated the Great Satan....
Americans should be proud that while we were there, as Jonathan Rauch pointed out, Afghanistan’s infant mortality rate dropped by 50 percent and life expectancy increased by six years. University graduates increased from 31,000 to nearly 200,000. And women were able to attend school, venture outside without covering, and participate in life. But that wasn’t the main reason we were there. The chief accomplishment of our Afghanistan deployment was to prevent another 9/11-style attack on the United States—and we did.
So we don’t need to beat our breasts about how misguided it was to suppose that we could transform a tribal society into a liberal democracy. Any movement in that direction was a bonus, but it wasn’t the chief goal. We were there to thwart attacks by terrorists who mean us grave harm. For 20 years, we succeeded. The future is now assuredly wretched for Afghans. And it is less safe for us. That’s not the voice of a disillusioned democracy-spreader, but a hard-headed realist."
http://twitter.com/monacharen
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