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Committing to a Mistake

I still remember seeing my high school classmates put on a production of The Crucible. A friend of mine played one of the elders who reasoned that they must have been correct to execute accused witches because otherwise they would have done immense harm and that wasn't possible.

The simple reason why I remember this so clearly is that I've heard variation on that theme every time we have withdrawn from an armed conflict after spending the lives of soldiers (on both sides) as well as civilians with nothing to show for it.  The investment of all these deaths must pay off and we can't withdraw until they do.

Most recently I have read and heard this re our withdrawal from Afghanistan, negotiated by President Trump with the Taliban and executed by President Biden. There is much to learn about how the withdrawal was done so that we can do better in the future, but the focus seems to be on the issue from The Crucible. We can't have supported the deaths of so many people without having something to show for it; we must stay until we do.

One reason why transactional approaches like this are so popular is that they side-step all of the messy questions about what our goals are and if they are achievable. If the goal is to create a nation in Afghanistan through force that resembles us, then perhaps we should consider the history of the region and the experience of other nations that attempted the same thing.

I too would like to have achieved more for women's rights and tolerance for diversity in that country. I would like to be able to fly unassisted. I think I and my country have the same abilities to achieve those goals.

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