The Dangers of Naive Interventionism

If you intervene in a complex system like Afghanistan, the desired results are rarely achieved. It invariably leads to the rise of terrorists and non-state military actors creating a new set of rivals altogether. My view is that it was always a long shot this one and it was probably going to fail because the Afghans do not like being ruled by others. But what was certainly the case was that the way that the Americans left was clearly going to undermine everything. And then the manner which they left, just turning the lights off in the bag-gram air base,. Not telling the Afghan army they were leaving. Leaving I believe 6,000 vehicles but taking the keets. This sort of thing is clearly