Why U.S. Failed in Afghanistan. No, It’s Not What You Think.

The U.S. the US withdrew from Afghanistan 3 years ago on August 26, 2021.
Blame our political and intellectual leaders, across two decades, for evading the ideological nature of the enemy and, consequently, miring U.S. forces in a “no-win” war.
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[@donesquire6919]

Adding my agreement that a computer voice diminishes the message. An intern with a decent speaking voice who understands the content would be more effective, inexpensive, and just as "scalable." The automated transcript lacks punctuation, paragraph structure, and isn't a good alternative.

[@hyperreal]

Interesting comment considering all the previous comments in videos complaining that the speakers are “boring” or something along those lines. ARI can’t win 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@donesquire6919]

I don’t blame ARI for experimenting with new technology to save time. It just isn’t effective here. Listening to the video is like reading a blog post nobody bothered to proofread.

[@DinkSmalwood]

@@hyperreal I don't think it's the same people complaining now that where complaining back then. I've never seen anyone write that the speakers are boring and never thought so myself. But even if they were boring, what people mean by "boring" is very often "lifeless and robotic", which is the definition of an AI voice. I don't see how this is the solution to boring speakers, if such a thing was a problem before.

[@SpacePatrollerLaser]

@@DinkSmalwood It occurs to me that philsophy, ergo Objectivism is a uniquely HUMAN activity and will not be available to robots for how long?. Therefore do we not want our "preachers" to be human as they accept Objectivism by choice? So it is something to them. Now, maybe Daneel Olivaw will be able to have some say in that, but that is millenna away

[@StrongHarm]

Obama had a lot to do with it.. and it was long before the withdraw. I'm a vet who has friends who are still down range. One of the toughest men I've ever known, a very senior soldier, broke down weeping and said "they're trying to kill us... our own leaders are trying to kill us?" He said they cut equipment and personnel by 50% but doubled the mission tempo. Early in the war we built FOBs (forward operating bases) and allowed bad guys to break their teeth on them. It was very effective. Obama later ordered the "expensive FOBs" to be taken down, and for the troops to go out and 'win hearts and minds' rather than 'hiding behind walls'. Casualties went up 3000%. We still achieved a 600:1 casualty ratio. No one in history has ever had that kind of success on the battlefield. The objective there was to build roads, hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure to weaken the foundations of Taliban rule. They could no longer roll into an isolated village and take away all the military aged males for the J ihad. A taste of freedom can have lingering effects, and time will tell whether it will be enough to end that culture. Unfortunately, something very similar was done to America during the Cold War... and it persists to this day. The compromising of our schools, university, and elected officials by c 0mmunism. Only time will tell if our own culture has been forever compromised.

[@VindiceLibertas]

Correct; and we are forever and irreparably compromised. Any and all attempts at reversing the damages afflicted by anti-American, illiberal philosophy, will always be met with claims we shouldn't interfere in education, despite the reality political organization and our present procedures, manifest into government, already sets curricula, thus determining what and how teaching is conducted. We subsidize the convergence of racial collectivism and the broader Communist ideology through such courses as African Studies, teaching Black Americans to believe their liberation is achieved by throwing themselves and others back into chains, absolute poverty beyond the comprehension of our poorest, and a world more broadly defined by force. It's rather Orwellian when you think about it: so many insist we intervene in education to proliferate such material and thus replicate such ideologues, yet simultaneously define interference as the cessation of such policy and the removal of its progeny from social science and other departments. Authoritarianism is a composite of action that either involves or intends a conclusion of organizing the state by means of initiative force, which is only characteristic to the first, in which individuals are, at least in part, expropriated and thus, in part enslaved, to provide for the resources requisite to producing and then compensating those who produce the product, in this case indoctrination into the Communist ideology, which otherwise hold no value to an individual when cost-benefit analysis is present in a free market for education; whereby, individuals must weigh whether the benefit justifies the cost as they pay out-of-pocket the full cost and price of the production. Nevertheless, they insist authoritarianism is manifest in our demand for the use of politically organized, initiative acts of force to cease. Naturally, they then characterize the acts of force, propagating their ideology, as liberating and delivering us unto freedom, the Democratic National Convention evincing this reality as the first to mind, for Shapiro, was public education; public education defined, controlled, and forced onto us by their form of political organization into government, provided for inefficiently and at grave expense of those expropriated to finance it, to which even they and members of the teachers unions they represent - laundering expropriated labor product through such organizations and which are then returned to them through campaign contributions from individual members of these entities - refuse to send their own children. They refuse to send their own children to the public prison system that defines public education, because they don't want their own children's learning disrupted by a culture of violent outbursts and disruption, gang warfare and drugs, sex in the back of classrooms, robbery in bathrooms and buses, and shame for knowing how to read, dressing or speaking properly as they're violently targeted, by unthinking brutes, for nothing more than a letter-grade higher than a D and which they must hide from those knuckle-dragging brutes who persistently haunt us all. They know the greatest opportunity a child can ever be given is a private education, free of these tyrannies they insist we continue to forcibly impose upon our own children, dragging them down to the lowest and foulest of creatures on the Earth, for nothing more than empty euphemisms about democracy and an unfair "equality" that involves denying our best a fair chance at life for no improvement of those they claim it otherwise assists by assimilating our own into their social degeneration.

[@andrewswift2683]

Spot on.

[@Gorboduc]

I'm sure I speak for many here when I say I'll never forget the tragic events of "Nined Eleven".

[@diegomorales8616]

Article, yay. Computer text-to-speech, meh.

[@jure4835]

Guys, what was wrong with Alex Wigger? Seriously.

[@jillm319]

It semi-sounds like him, yet altered.

[@DaloarHossenrf]

Clark Dorothy Smith Kenneth Johnson Kimberly

[@LibertyHawk71]

In the early 2000s, I thought that Iraq and Afghanistan would be much better countries by now. I think I underestimated how brainwashed the masses of those countries were and still are. I don't know how that mess should be handled.

[@cancatcannothaz]

WHY do always people in west think that they KNOW what is best for a population 1000s of miles away? that have almost polar opposite culture anyway.. genuinely curious, seeking a genuine response

[@DinkSmalwood]

Is this an AI voice? It sounds wierd and some pronounciation, and especially emphasis, is off. Please don't lower your standards over at ARI. Insofar as you want to reach people, you really can't afford it.

[@J-138-J]

It's exactly what we think 😂

[@SpacePatrollerLaser]

Please ditch the robot voice, it is unbecoming of Objectivism. The elocution errors are grossly apparent, such as the long space before "failure" and some of the mispronouciation. Eliminate the bad habits by not starting them The war was lost by 2008 when the Bush admin let the Teliban escape to Wiseristan and did not harrass and assassinate them all over the world. That failure was due to the casues you identify One reason the GOP deserves a proper caning (23 of the Best) is the middle finger they are sticking in the face of our intellects. The Trump Administration surrender had us existing by May. Biden actually bought us 3 more months. by which time anyone who wanted out of Afghanistan could have left if they were serious. But the root of this is on Bush II since he did not drive the dagger home. If Pakistan would have started bitching, he should have said "You are either with us or the retrograde terrorists. And we will act accordingly, No place in the world will be safe fro them -- and their helpers!". Then made it stick You nailed it

[@Inductica]

I'm fine with robot voices if it enables you guys to make more of your essays available in audio. I love listening while driving or lifting.

[@SpacePatrollerLaser]

@@Inductica Isn't listening to ideational content while driving a form of distracted driving since it pulls your attention elsewhere? Otherwise it is just "noise in the corner" and you are not doing it justice. Besides is not distracted driving contrary to Objectivism? I mean piloting a 2-1/2 tone vehicle at a mile a minute with your head in the clouds Because if elocution glitches; misplaced pauses, mispronounciations and improper inflections, current robot voices, while quite human-sounding do not deliver an accurate rendition of the material at the moderately nuanced level

[@freedomwriter1995]

Part of the reason is that they chose to spread themselves thin by invading Iraq instead of focusing on Afghanistan only.

[@eltorocal]

Bill Hale - "I mean, there might be a public outcry for awhile... but then, you know what happens? People forget. They don't remember, they don't care. They just don't care. It's just gonna' be another everyday, common tragedy." Ernest Burkhart - "Yeah, it's -- it's not common." Bill Hale - "Don't do somethin' you're gonna' regret for the rest of your life... You're gonna' regret..." Ernest Burkhart - "I ain't got nothin' but regret, Bill..." Bill Hale - "You have a family... Children. Don't make it more of a tragedy..." - Bill Hale and Ernest Burkhart talking in jail from "Killers of the Flower Moon" (2023) It took 40 Years for the USA to sign on to the 1948 UN Genocide Convention... and it was the atrocities committed by the U.S. on the N. American Tribal Nations which fronted the delay. Ironically, in 1987, it was a Congressman from Delaware who finally signed on for the U.S... none other than now President Joseph Robinette Biden. If a Lie is told often enough, and found to be effective... Israel will STEAL it and claim it was theirs all along. Now read up on the FACTS behind Royal Dutch Shell and the Gaza Marine1 and Gaza Marine2 Natural Gas Fields just off the coast.

[@Mr.Witness]

@@eltorocalSo what?

[@eltorocal]

@@Mr.Witness what are you, eleven?

[@SpacePatrollerLaser]

@@eltorocal Bush was never serious about Afghanistan anyway. He only started with 10,000 troops hoping to cash in on the constant internal fighting that went on there. When you mean something. You go in with overwhelming force of your own and guns blazing: Some friggin' cowboy Bush was!