> **Twenty years of ruling class failure** > The mission that the United States—or, to be more precise, the George W. Bush Administration—set for itself in Afghanistan was doomed from the beginning. It declared unrealizable goals, which experience quickly showed were unrealizable, and then instead of learning from that experience, doubled and tripled down over and over. And not just the Bush Administration but the entire bipartisan foreign policy establishment. If the hoary cliché is true that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then American policy in Afghanistan over the last 20 years is a textbook example.