I had a couple of buddies way back in 2005 who served in the British Army in Iraq. They were in some pretty heavy combat areas and had seen a lot of death first hand.

We shared an office. I never really asked them their views, but one day out of the blue one of them seemed to get a “click” of realization and said to us “You know, that whole thing was a complete fucking waste.” A waste of time, money and lives.

He realized that in 2005. They were British and realized the US had pretty much duped them into a war based on a complete lie. I think they reached some kind of acceptance 15 years ago about that.

I return to America several years later and saw the whole country is still in denial and unable to move on in the same way the British did.

“Nation Building” is among the top ridiculous euphemisms out there. It’s a complete “rescuer” frame of mind on a global scale. By analogy it would be like when Child Protective Services comes in with a SWAT team, guns blazing and kills one parent, the family dog and half the kids because the parents spanked the kids and some of the kids stole candy from a store.
Once again, Trump is the accidental actor. In some convoluted way and acting on dubious motives, he got us out of a 20 year unhealthy relationship.

One thing I learned during my time as an educator is that you can’t force someone to learn. It’s impossible. Only when the student is ready will the information actually be allowed to sink in. More recently this concept has been reinforced in my work with “shadow work”. People will either be willing to see their own shadows - or they won’t. If they are unwilling to do their own work, no on can “push” them into it.
On a community or national scale this is even more obvious. It’s clear to me that the vast majority of Afghanistan was completely unwilling to be “built”. It’s also going to become more clear as time goes by that the dollars spent on “nation building” was eventually funneled into the Taliban through corruption and graft. Billions of dollars just disappeared and are not accounted for - very similar to the way the dollars of the Russian bailout ended up in the pockets of organized crime.
I personally witnessed the nation building gravy train of corruption and graft in Central Europe when NATO was expanding. I got my own little dab of gravy on my biscuit, lol.
The difference there was the nation as a whole wanted to be 'built" and be included in the West community of nations and culture, and were willing to take a “secondary” or “sidekick” status position to other western nations.