“You're basically trying to create a new country in a country that's been around for centuries. ... If we're not planning to stay forever, why do we think Afghans will side with us or the government they know we're paying for? Whenever we leave, it's going to fall apart.”

-- Spc. Joshua Duren, to reporter Martin Kuz, in Logar province, Afghanistan, 2011, as remembered in Kuz's article “Looking back at Afghanistan as the past returns,” in The Christian Science Monitor. The feel is that throughout our attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan, everyone on the ground knew what the brass wouldn't say: It wasn't working. Kuz also reminds us that the Taliban offered to surrender in December 2001, but Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected the offer. Add that to his list.