Why Does Afghanistan Surprise Anyone?

Jim Mason
1 min readJul 14, 2021

Actions based on ignorance, no matter how well-intentioned, are dangerous.

Photo by Azzedine Rouichi on Unsplash

After the longest war in its history, the United States is withdrawing its military forces from Afghanistan, with all of the sad, predictable consequences that will entail. Why did U.S. government leaders think it would end otherwise — that an alien, external culture could transform Afghanistan from a tribal society into a…

Jim Mason

I study language, cognition, and humans as social animals. You can support me by joining Medium at https://jmason37-80878.medium.com/membership