Quoted: Andrew Kydd, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that while he was surprised by the speed of the takeover, the lack of commitment by Afghan forces and rampant corruption in the government made a long-term defense of Afghanistan impossible.
“The Afghan military simply wasn’t fighting for the Afghan government,” Kydd said. “There’s no way to overcome that with training.”
Mou Banerjee, an assistant professor in the UW-Madison history department, wondered what the human and emotional toll, both in Afghanistan and here in the U.S., would be.
Although Banerjee said it would likely be decades before the U.S. had a full understanding of the Afghanistan war, she said a key takeaway was the costs — whether of people, resources or foreign relations — that came with fighting a war of this magnitude for this long.
“It’s almost impossible to sustain a war against an idea, the ‘war against terror,’” Banerjee said.