Questions we’re not Asking About Afghanistan — Market Mad House

Daniel G. Jennings
6 min readAug 19, 2021

“News is only the first rough draft of history.” — Alan Barth journalist.*

The ongoing debacle in Afghanistan shows the limits of “news” and modern journalism. Catastrophe has been looming in Afghanistan for years as The Washington Post’s excellent The Afghanistan Papers series demonstrates. Evidence that the Afghan army and government would collapse without American help abounded, but nobody paid attention.

Yet the Taliban’s apparent victory has taken the American media by complete surprise. Instead, the media is attacking President Joe Biden (D-Delaware) for losing a war that began almost 20 years before he took office.

Apparently, no American journalists except some Washington Post reporters were paying any attention to Afghanistan. Now the same hypocritical journalists are attacking Biden for honorably abiding by an agreement his controversial predecessor Donald J. Trump (R-Florida) made.

Worst of all are the questions nobody in the media is asking. I think those questions should include:

1. How did the Taliban get the resources, organization, training, weapons, and leadership necessary to launch a successful blitzkrieg after 20 years of American occupation?

Are we supposed to believe that a mob of poppy growers and sheepherders led by village schoolteachers…

--

--

Daniel G. Jennings

Daniel G. Jennings is a writer who lives and works in Colorado. He is a lifelong history buff who is fascinated by stocks, politics, and cryptocurrency.