The US government, under Dubya and under Obama, lied to itself about the war in Afghanistan because the presidents and their cabinets preferred soothing falsehoods to painful truth.

"If we think our exit strategy is to either beat the Taliban — which can’t be done given the local, regional, and cross border circumstances — or to establish an Afghan government that is capable of delivering good government to its citizens using American tools and methods, then we do not have an exit strategy because both of those are impossible&helliip; We did not know what we were doing."