[vkou]

So, by any objective metric, #2, #3, and #4 have nothing in common between the two nations, and by the late 2010s, Afghanistan was a historic footnote that everyone stopped giving a shit about.

The US is incredibly successful at exporting about half of the pain from its fiscal policy to other nations, (given that the dollar is the world's reserve currency), not the other way around. It's economy is incredibly productive, and its bureaucracy is roughly the same size to that of other developed nations.

What it does have is a tidal wave of propaganda, sponsored by a small group of robber barons and oligarchs people who would benefit from destroying that bureaucracy. Which somehow convinced ~49.8% of the country that the richest man in the world somehow has their interests at heart.

[briantakita]

> Which somehow convinced ~49.8% of the country that the richest man in the world somehow has their interests at heart.

Well...when you consider the competition you get what you get. In this case the richest man in the world positioned to be the "savior" from the previous regime.

> its bureaucracy is roughly the same size to that of other developed nations.

Slashing the bureaucracy is not the full story. Basically, most Americans have umbrage against the previous regime. So the enemy of my enemy is my friend...or at least useful.

[vkou]

> Basically, most Americans have umbrage against the previous regime.

80% of all of features in Word are useless to me, but for each user, it's a different 80%.

The same with government. There isn't a person alive that doesn't have issue with some part of it, but start going down the list, and you'll very quickly discover why so many parts of it are important, and why you shouldn't delegate picking and choosing to an unelected billionaire narcissist with no skin in the game, no consequences for bad behavior, and most of all, no legal authority to make any of those arbitrary choices.