Why Is the Afghan National Army Performing So Miserably?

[Ford_Prefect]

24. The Neo-Cons surrounding Cheney/Bush engineered the invasion and the mission

to suit their fantasies of neo-Christian "liberation". They did the same for Iraq as for Afghanistan assuming their model of democracy was universally applicable. Neo-Cons live in a Disney-like version of cold-war America in which the divisions and solutions are very black and white. They quite badly misunderstood the ethos and subtleties of the Muslim world, and broadly discounted the degree of corruption in the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. They also went in hungry to exploit regional resources much as a colonial power.

When things went badly post-invasion they made many of the same assumptions as a previous Pentagon & State Department during Vietnam. They also could not accept or deal with the idea that they might have been wrong in their planning assumptions. Instead of reacting to the realities of the situation they covered up their failures, which is what the US has been doing for the last 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq...

...And now in Yemen along with much of Africa.