from Hacker News

The US Government Lied for Two Decades on Afghanistan

by all_usernames on 8/16/21, 5:14 PM with 11 comments

• by mark_l_watson on 8/16/21, 6:44 PM

  I wonder why more people don't follow Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwall. I believe them more than I believe MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, etc., and it feels right to me to spend a few dollars a month supporting independent journalism. (I also donate to Democracy Now and NPR).

• by TheCuriousGuy on 8/17/21, 10:38 AM

  Yes and what is worse is China will get access to the natural resources at a fraction of what US spent in Afghanistan all these years. More discussion in this podcast episode: https://jingle.fm/p/tabadlabs-dragon-road-1570336991/s01-e08...

• by CarelessExpert on 8/16/21, 8:45 PM

  Honestly, I don't know that I'm with Greenwald all the way to the conclusion, here. I think it's just as possible that successive administrations all fell for a mix of sunk cost fallacies, confirmation bias, poor incentives, etc, that caused leadership to receive or only pay attention to the most rosy results, the best possible models, the most positive data.

  Bureaucracies are weird, byzantine things. To assume malice when, given the information we currently have, incompetence is equally likely seems to me to be editorializing.

  Is incompetence good? Hell no, and the administration has a lot to answer for. But to assume, not just that the administration didn't know how bad the exit from Afghanistan would be, but that they intentionally lied about it, is a leap that, while possible, I'm not yet willing to make.

• by Jyaif on 8/16/21, 6:36 PM

  When I see this picture, I can't help but think that a drone strike on the palace at the right time would have gotten rid of a good chunk of the taliban leadership.