why did they fail so miserably? thank you for having me on tonight, don. so one of the reasons, many reasons. one of them is we should focus on from the get-go, that the united states and afghanistan, we were centrally occupiers. and the afghan forces were fighting along disside us, fighting alongside government that was very connected to us as you know from afghanistan history, on resisting occupation, it is something that has been a part of their history. and that helps motivate people to do this. i don t think this is terribly hard to understand. it is a characteristic of many countries but certainly afghanistan. when it comes to who will fight toe to toe the longest, who will stick it out the longest, the taliban often had the edge. that is kind of a base reason. there are more things that happened over the last two weeks or so that go in addition tom.
as you know from afghanistan history, resisting occupation is something that s been a part of their history, and that helps motivate people to do things. it helps define what it means to be afghan. i don t think this is terribly hard to understand. this is a characteristic of many countries but it s certainly evident in afghanistan. so when it came to who s going to fight toe to toe the longest, who s going to stick it out the longest, the taliban often had the edge. that s kind of a base reason. there s some more things that have happened over the past two weeks or so that go into addition to that, but i d label that as the base reason for what we ve seen happen. you have been trying to answer the question, how do we lose this war? in politico, you say, corruption was part of the problem. as is well known, the effectiveness of soldiers and police suffered because government officials or military commanders pocketed their pay, hoarded their ammunition, and diluted rosters with ghost