This is only a surprise to the wilfully ignorant and to those for whom facts are inconvenient. It was Iran that provided the US with intelligence on Al Qaeda and the Taliban prior to the US's invasion.
A general rule when it comes to wars of occupation (with few exceptions) is they only end one two ways: genocide of the local populace or defeat of the occupier. Either the occupier commits crimes so heinous that those killed never re-attain a population necessary to defeat them (e.g. Australia, North America, Tibet), or the occupiers lose because they are not willing to "go that extra mile" to commit war crimes, or they lose the moral war (e.g. Vietnam, India, Afghanistan many times).
Wars of occupation are exactly what the word means: they involve occupying someone else's country. Unless the home team can no longer fight for it because they've lost the numbers game, they will eventually win because it's their land and they will never give it up. Even Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan took on the attitude of "You'll have to kill us all to defeat us" when the war turned against them.
Another fact in the war in Afghanistan is that since the US gained independence, the US has never won a long war that it started. The US has won short wars of under a year (Iraq 1, Granada, Mexico, Philippines) and it has won long wars where it was the defender against foreign aggression (World War II), but the US has never had the stomach to fight a long war with massive losses of soldiers when it began wars to occupy and control foreign nations.
This is exemplified in the US's obsession with weaponry and fighting from a distance (missiles, planes, gunships, etc.). The US military and US public cringe at the loss of even handful of soldiers (4,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan, 50,000 in Vietnam, etc.) while their opponents are willing to die by the millions. And that's despite the massive number of Americans and military and financial resources available to the country.
This is only a surprise to the wilfully ignorant and to those for whom facts are inconvenient. It was Iran that provided the US with intelligence on Al Qaeda and the Taliban prior to the US's invasion.
A US or UK government or business take responsibility for its own actions? Are you nuts?
Responsibility is for "them". "We" have impunity.
A general rule when it comes to wars of occupation (with few exceptions) is they only end one two ways: genocide of the local populace or defeat of the occupier. Either the occupier commits crimes so heinous that those killed never re-attain a population necessary to defeat them (e.g. Australia, North America, Tibet), or the occupiers lose because they are not willing to "go that extra mile" to commit war crimes, or they lose the moral war (e.g. Vietnam, India, Afghanistan many times).
Wars of occupation are exactly what the word means: they involve occupying someone else's country. Unless the home team can no longer fight for it because they've lost the numbers game, they will eventually win because it's their land and they will never give it up. Even Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan took on the attitude of "You'll have to kill us all to defeat us" when the war turned against them.
Another fact in the war in Afghanistan is that since the US gained independence, the US has never won a long war that it started. The US has won short wars of under a year (Iraq 1, Granada, Mexico, Philippines) and it has won long wars where it was the defender against foreign aggression (World War II), but the US has never had the stomach to fight a long war with massive losses of soldiers when it began wars to occupy and control foreign nations.
This is exemplified in the US's obsession with weaponry and fighting from a distance (missiles, planes, gunships, etc.). The US military and US public cringe at the loss of even handful of soldiers (4,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan, 50,000 in Vietnam, etc.) while their opponents are willing to die by the millions. And that's despite the massive number of Americans and military and financial resources available to the country.