What Empires Do Not See

A reader writes:

When we were deep in Iraqsay, 2007there were a lot of folks trying to draw an analogy to Vietnam. I was never particularly comfortable with that one; it didn’t seem apt. But in Afghanistan, it seems *completely* apt. Mountains instead of jungles, but the same unrest in the population; the same difficulties in having a standing fight in which U.S. Military superiority works to our advantage; the same prospect of basically endless war. So what I’m wondering is, if we just up and leave, what’s the problem? Al Qaeda? No; if they are “forced out” of Afghanistan, they’ll just decamp to Pakistan. Or Uzbekhistan, or Syria, or basically anyplace else.

They’re not an army or militia; they’re a terrorist group. We can’t simultaneously force them out of all the countries on Earth; this is not a military operation. They may have laughed at Kerry in 2004 when he pointed that out, but he was right. The sooner our fearless leaders recognize that and pull our chestnuts out of that fire, the better off we’ll be.

Hubris is one of the signs of Imperial collapse. Don’t any of these clowns read history?