Dr. Pry analyzes the catastrophic events unfolding in Afghanistan, yet another failure of Washington elites, a catastrophe unforeseen by them, but foreseen by most average Americans. How could Washington blunder so? Gross incompetence. The U.S. should have withdrawn during the Winter, not during the fighting season, and should not have withdrawn close-air support from the Warthog fighter aircraft, the only thing keeping the Taliban at bay. Most fundamentally, the U.S. should never have engaged in “nation-building” in Iraq or Afghanistan. Especially in Afghanistan, most of the population still lives in the social and cultural equivalent of the Dark Ages. The idea of converting these ancient tribal societies into secular-humanist-feminist democracies was always doomed to fail.