Cue the Helicopters

The U.S.’s top general in Afghanistan on Tuesday gave a sobering assessment of the country’s deteriorating security situation as America winds down its so-called “forever war.”

Gen. Austin S. Miller said the rapid loss of districts around the country to the Taliban — several with significant strategic value — is worrisome. He also cautioned that the militias deployed to help the beleaguered national security forces could lead the country into civil war.

Is there anyone out there who seriously thought that, at least since 2004, that it would end any other way? If there was ever a hope that it wouldn't, that ended when the Bush Administration declared victory and starved Afghanistan of resources so they could prosecute their misbegotton war with Iraq. Afghanistan became a kleptocracy, one that was funded by pallets of cash. Government officials and generals on a public salary of a few hundred dollars a month built massive mansions.

Afghanistan has consistently ranked as one of the most corrupt nations on Earth. The army and police had tens of thousands of "ghost soldiers," men who were on the payroll, but whose pay ended up in the pockets of officers. Virtually every construction project or civil works project was riddled with graft.

Afghanistan, like a certain other southeast Asian nation, was a country that floated on the largess of the American treasury and the blood of American soldiers.

This ending was carved in stone and highlighted with blood a very long time ago.

I respectfully submit that anyone who believed otherwise was either under orders to espouse the company line or has the brains of a tuber.