Taliban Didn't Win in Afghanistan, the Defense Contractors Did
You've probably read a lot about Afghanistan in the past week, more perhaps than at any time in recent memory. There are any number of hot takes, articles, op-eds and analyses of the Taliban, the U.S. withdrawal and the geopolitical implications of the fall of Kabul. These are all very valuable topics that are worth discussing. But what is curiously missing from much of the conversation is how this failed war had been extensively outsourced to nontransparent and unaccountable actors.
A purported war for a democratic Afghanistan pursued in glaringly undemocratic ways.
It behooves America to consider how and why so much of such a vital conflict was assigned to private contractors—and whether that kind of approach was even partly to blame for the debacle that ensued. It might be. That is not even to broach the topic of whether so much of the world's most powerful country's foreign policy should be in the hands of corporations that do not answer to the people footing the bill, namely, the taxpayer. I would have expected more Americans to be outraged.
Perhaps, one can hope, that outrage will swell over time, as more Americans come to learn of what exactly transpired—and how much of their treasure was squandered. I must insist journalists do their part to follow the money. We cannot let this story slip from the headlines without demanding accountability. Even a cursory examination of what happened would provoke great consternation—revealing, at times, a grim and tragic comedy of errors.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/taliban-didnt-win-in-afghanistan-the-defense-contractors-did-opinion/ar-AANxu5E
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