WALL STREET JOURNAL
The Army Needs to Understand the Afghanistan Disaster
by Frank Sobchak and Matthew Zais
September 8, 2021

The U.S. war in Af­ghanistan was a costly fail­ure. More than 2,400 Amer­i­cans died dur­ing the two-decade con­flict. Tens of thou­sands more re­turned home with life-al­ter­ing wounds. The Kabul gov­ern­ment col­lapsed be­fore Amer­i­can forces had with­drawn and the Afghan Army sim­ply evap­o­rated. The Tal­iban marked its vic­tory with cel­e­bra­tory gun­fire and pa­rades. This dis­as­trous out­come de­serves an hon­est reck­on­ing. Such in­tro­spec­tion is es­pe­cially needed within the U.S. Army, which pro­vided most of the mis­sion com­man­ders and a ma­jor­ity of the troops. Un­for­tu­nately, there is lit­tle in­cen­tive for ei­ther the ser­vice’s lead­ers or bu­reau­cracy to con­duct such an in­quiry. READ MORE