Correct.
Both Afghanistan and Iraq have proved that the United States can neither build nations nor create armies out of scratch, especially in countries that have a limited middle class and low education rates, over a decade or two. It takes generations. Not enough people have the knowledge or experience to navigate whole new ways of life, whatever they want in principle. Ethnic and sectarian divisions thwart attempts to overhaul political, social, and economic life all at the same time. The United States spent eighty-three billion dollars training and arming an Afghan force of some three hundred thousand—more than four times the size of the Taliban’s militia. And nothing to show for it.
America’s Great Retreat is as humiliating as the Soviet Union’s withdrawal in 1989. Amrikis love to gloat that it contributed to the end of the Soviet Union and Communist rule. Well, that is probably true. However, the Soviet Union is estimated to have spent about fifty billion dollars during the first seven of its ten years occupying Afghanistan. The United States was in Afghanistan twice as long and spent far more. So, who's the bigger loser?
For the United States, the costs do not end with its withdrawal from either Afghanistan or Iraq. It could cost another two trillion dollars just to pay for the health care and disability of veterans from those wars. And those costs may not peak until 2048. This war is going to continue still, just not on the ground anymore. In all, forty-seven thousand civilians have died, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. More than twenty-four hundred were U.S. military personnel, and almost four thousand were U.S. contractors.
The Soviet Union at least, functionally brought Afghanistan 40 years forward, starting with the Band-e Sardeh dam, and Kabul polytechnic, and all the major infrastructure and social programs they fulfilled. Roads, tunnels, railways - all of that used to be constructed with Soviet power and money. Just take a look at USAID official web, where they clearly state, that the main goal is to maintain the Soviet built infrastructure.
In 15 years, they managed to reconstruct a whole 200+ km of roads, and refurbish one of the turbines settled at Kajaki dam, built by a US company, paid by the Afghans, upgraded by the Russians, and bombed by the US and then rebuilt with US taxpayers' dollars a few years later.
In the end, both of the big powers withdrew as losers, with their tails between their legs, leaving behind chaos. America was less brutal and didn't commit war crimes on the level of the Soviet Union, so there's that I guess.
