A tragic ending to a useless war

Re: “It's over, except for those left behind” (NP Montreal, Aug. 31)

After nearly 20 years, the war in Afghanistan has finally ended. More than 2,300 U.S. soldiers were killed. Canada lost 158. Many thousands more Afghans lost their lives, while very little has changed, it seems.

The only positive result visible to this observer is that Afghan women had a window of employment, education and human rights, and the nation had a temporary freedom from the tyranny of the Taliban.

Western nations spent almost 20 years training and equipping the Afghan army and invested billions in military ordinance for them. Despite all of this effort, “experts” predicted the army would hold off the Taliban for six to nine months, and yet it seems they did not fight at all. Why?

In my view, the military leadership and rank and file knew they could not win in the long term, and also feared deadly retaliation from the Taliban after they lost, so they melted away from any battle. Perfectly logical in hindsight and yet the so-called experts did not foresee this possibility, and as a result there was not enough time to rescue thousands of Afghans who collaborated with the Western allies. Now they are hiding in fear for their lives, a very tragic footnote to a very useless war. Norm Shacter, Westmount