JoeB131
Diamond Member
Watching all these hand-wringing about Afghanistan, I am forced to think about the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
The sunk cost fallacy is when because you have invested time, money and effort into something, you should keep doing so even though it isn't working.
I can't think of a better example than Afghanistan.
Let's be honest, we went in there with the best of intentions, to help the people of that country, but then again, the Soviets probably thought the same thing when they invaded in 1979.
While we see Democracy, Freedom and Equality as virtues, they see them as just words by western invaders, and they've been dealing with western invaders for centuries. They were never going to embrace western values.
Our problems began 42 years ago when the Soviets invaded, and Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were talked into arming religious fanatics to fight them. But because the CIA really didn't have anyone who understood Pashtun or Tajik or Uzbek cultures, they decided to recruit a bunch of Arabs to fight over there instead... And we all know how that turned around to bite us.
The wise thing to do was to limit our mission over there to just killing Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorists who the Taliban had sheltered. Instead, we took on the role of Nation Building, even though Geo. W. Bush had denounced Nation Building when Clinton tried to do it in the Balkans.
Bush further lost the opportunity when he diverted resources from finishing the job to go after Saddam. That gave the Taliban a chance to regroup as the people we supported failed to live up to the promises. It didn't help that the people we put into office were notoriously corrupt. The mid aughts saw a spike of Heroin in Europe because Karzai's cronies were flooding the market with opium that the Taliban had burned.
I don't hold Obama blameless. While Obama called Iraq a War of Choice, he called Afghanistan a War of Necessity, when it really wasn't. The only thing he was trying to do was avoid getting labelled as soft like Dukakis did in 1988. When Hamid Karzai stole the election of 2009, it became apparent to everyone that "democracy" in Afghanistan was a fraud. Yet he persisted.
Ah, and then there's Trump. You know, the guy who knew more about war than all the generals. His brilliant scheme was to sign a deal with the Taliban if they pinky swore not to topple the government we had spent 2 trillion propping up over the last 20 years.
So here's Biden, being the guy who rips the Band-Aid off the wound. He'll take the heat for it. Maybe he shouldn't have signed on to Reagan's scheme to arm the Muhajedin or Bush's war or Obama's surge, so his whole career has kind of led to this moment.
But the foolishness would be to invest more time, money and lives into this enterprise.
The sunk cost fallacy is when because you have invested time, money and effort into something, you should keep doing so even though it isn't working.
I can't think of a better example than Afghanistan.
Let's be honest, we went in there with the best of intentions, to help the people of that country, but then again, the Soviets probably thought the same thing when they invaded in 1979.
While we see Democracy, Freedom and Equality as virtues, they see them as just words by western invaders, and they've been dealing with western invaders for centuries. They were never going to embrace western values.
Our problems began 42 years ago when the Soviets invaded, and Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were talked into arming religious fanatics to fight them. But because the CIA really didn't have anyone who understood Pashtun or Tajik or Uzbek cultures, they decided to recruit a bunch of Arabs to fight over there instead... And we all know how that turned around to bite us.
The wise thing to do was to limit our mission over there to just killing Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorists who the Taliban had sheltered. Instead, we took on the role of Nation Building, even though Geo. W. Bush had denounced Nation Building when Clinton tried to do it in the Balkans.
Bush further lost the opportunity when he diverted resources from finishing the job to go after Saddam. That gave the Taliban a chance to regroup as the people we supported failed to live up to the promises. It didn't help that the people we put into office were notoriously corrupt. The mid aughts saw a spike of Heroin in Europe because Karzai's cronies were flooding the market with opium that the Taliban had burned.
I don't hold Obama blameless. While Obama called Iraq a War of Choice, he called Afghanistan a War of Necessity, when it really wasn't. The only thing he was trying to do was avoid getting labelled as soft like Dukakis did in 1988. When Hamid Karzai stole the election of 2009, it became apparent to everyone that "democracy" in Afghanistan was a fraud. Yet he persisted.
Ah, and then there's Trump. You know, the guy who knew more about war than all the generals. His brilliant scheme was to sign a deal with the Taliban if they pinky swore not to topple the government we had spent 2 trillion propping up over the last 20 years.
So here's Biden, being the guy who rips the Band-Aid off the wound. He'll take the heat for it. Maybe he shouldn't have signed on to Reagan's scheme to arm the Muhajedin or Bush's war or Obama's surge, so his whole career has kind of led to this moment.
But the foolishness would be to invest more time, money and lives into this enterprise.