National security expert Lucas Kunce on Tuesday said blaming the American public for the chaos seen in Afghanistan this week is the “definition of insanity” created by a lie that “people who have power, are in control are happy to perpetuate.”
U.S. Naval War College professor Tom Nichols published a piece in The Atlantic this week arguing that the American people held responsibility for the fall of Afghanistan’s government due to the immense public support American military operations in the country received.
Kunce, a Marine officer running as a Democrat in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race, shot back at Nichols’ characterization.
“This is like the definition of insanity, right? They they told us forever that Afghanistan was going great and then now they’re blaming the voter for supposedly it being their fault,” Kunce, who is running as a Democrat in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race, said on Hill.TV’s “Rising.”
The Taliban on Sunday took control of Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul and demanded a peaceful transfer of power after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Thousands of Afghans have since attempted to escape the country, with several dying in their efforts.
Kunce said the disarray in Afghanistan is reminiscent to what he saw precede the chaos in Iraq when he was part of the Marine Corps in 2007. According to Kunce, superiors forbade him from providing accurate evaluation to Iraqi forces that he trained, despite feeling that many members of the force should have received lower ratings than they did.
“There was just this huge systematic lie or systematic institutional dishonesty that was perpetuated by the people in charge,” Kunce said. “And in Iraq we saw them get overrun by a couple thousand guys with pickup trucks and now we’re seeing the same thing in Afghanistan.
“It’s just this big institutional lie that the people who have power, are in control are happy to perpetuate because it serves their purposes,” he added.
This story was updated at 5:37 p.m.
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