U.S. society’s greatest strength is its can-do spirit. When Americans strive for an ambitious goal, such as sending a man to the moon, they take full control and charge full speed ahead. This works wonders on U.S. soil. It creates disasters on foreign soil.

I got my first glimpse of Washington’s problem with the first C—control—in Phnom Penh in 1973. Serving then as a young, single diplomat in the Singaporean Embassy in the war-torn Cambodian capital, I dated a young female diplomat from the U.S. Embassy. She had an easy job. Each morning, she would get clear instructions from Washington on what Cambodia should do with its troubled economy. She would personally drive over and deliver the instructions to the Cambodian minister of the economy. Since Washington had some of the world’s best economists, this made sense. But it also deprived the Cambodian government of any sense of agency or control over its own destiny. Hence, when the United States left, the hapless government collapsed.

Similarly, the larger Afghan army of 300,000 people performed well against the smaller Taliban army of 75,000 people when U.S. commanders and soldiers were embedded with Afghan army units to make decisions and decide when and how to fight. Like the Cambodian government, the Afghan army had no control over its destiny. Hence, when U.S. control left the scene, everything collapsed. Future historians will remark on a curious paradox in this sad Afghan chapter. The United States went to Afghanistan to build and nurture a democracy. But by taking effective control of Afghanistan for 20 years, the Americans couldn’t have behaved in a more undemocratic fashion.