But both ordinary citizens and the Taliban know that the United States will withdraw. It will withdraw for political reasons and because staying in Afghanistan is stupendously expensive. The U.S. military, carefully designed to inflict crushing high-intensity force, spends $1 million per year to put each soldier in Afghanistan. You don’t want to have been a tool of the United States when these forces are drawn down and the Taliban return to power. In Afghanistan, the United States is “wrestling the gorilla” because it has allowed itself to be drawn into a conflict in support of an almost
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