The “new land is the land of opportunity” was a popular phrase among Europeans in the early 1700s. This ‘new land’ is referred to today’s United States of America. Even now we say America is the land of opportunity. The new land was popular for games of chance as cited by historian Neal Millikan, who is an authority over the history of the United States.
The two British-American colonies—Jamestown and Virginia—were gambling havens for Europeans by the 1860s therefore we understand that American prosperity and history are strongly related to games of chance. Gambling, lotteries, and the gold rush are simple references to American history and American mindsets. We know that war is a game of probability based on multiple variables having different ratios, decision-makers in the light of Danial Kahneman’s Prospect Theory take decisions involving risk factors.
This theory describes how individuals assess their loss and gain perspectives in an asymmetric manner. For example, for some individuals, the pain from losing $1,000 could only be compensated by the pleasure of earning $2,000. In our daily life, we may not even think about the probability ratio of our decisions; most of the time we just notice the factor of chance and confuse it with the logical process of landscaping or prospective analysis. Let it be, it is okay for an individual choice to decide.
Decision-making, when having a high ratio of probability with a higher likelihood towards odds, must not be taken by depending on mere chance. Chances of odds in favour or against have no logical framework; they are based on predictions driven from previous experiences. And the nominal data is in percentage, which is based on speculation; on the other hand, probable factors can be much more conclusive in a risk analysis. The US, from the very first day, became a victim of slow and fast thinking, metaphorically they put the risk analysis on the back burner and started deciding in a hurry to gain more.
The probability of winning the Afghan war was based on a chance, built on predictions of odds that may be in favour at an exact time and space, though the war itself was a misperceived factor and clearly relying on uninformed variables
Taking the chance of creating the Mujahideen in early 1979 was based on the probability of denting the former Soviet Union so the chance was taken and this game of chance was a win. Leaving Afghanistan and Pakistan to face the results of a civil war after the withdrawal of the former USSR was also taking another chance to let the Afghans and Pakistanis clean the garbage of war. Indirectly supporting the advent of the Taliban was taken as a chance for the cleansing of the Mujahideen but here the game of chance went out of control when according to the United States, its soil was targeted by the Taliban in the 9/11 event. Operation: Enduring Freedom was launched as another probability of cleansing of the Taliban and reverting the concept of Jihad that was promoted to defeat the former USSR.
The expected outcome of launching Operation Enduring Freedom was saving humanity, protecting women’s rights, securing art and culture, and so on and so forth. But the first six months of this operation got no results and the US again lost the gamble of taking over Afghanistan in 10 days as announced by then-President Bush.
The game of taking a chance was not over. As indicated by the Prospect Theory, how individuals compensate their pain of losing $1,000 by keeping gambling unless they win $2,000; the US pitched all its allies under the ISAF force for winning the situation. This gamble was also lost so US and NATO forces decided to leave Afghanistan after 20 years of war of meddling and ruining the region and the withdrawal started instantly without winning what we can call $2000. The pain of losing $1000 was too high even after withdrawal, now the US has resent B-52s to Afghanistan, taking another chance—the game of chance still continues.
We understand that chances were bleak from the beginning to use them as odds in favour. Even though it took 20 years to get the clear prospect that the US’ main vector on the scale was wrong. It was not a “war”, rather it was a “conflict”. Moreover, all the previous decision-making was a play between a chance and probability of war; it was a conflict. Why did it take two decades for top decision-makers to get the right perspective? Why have decisions in all these years been made on the basis of war and all the risks related to the war-like situations when in fact Afghanistan was a conflict zone? Who will take responsibility for all the collateral damage from both sides?
In my understanding, it was also a chance taken by US-led NATO to curb a conflict with war tactics, but as I have said before, the game of chance is always dependent on odds, lesser odds against, and more in favour. Nothing could be predetermined, and a surprising outcome. On the contrary, probability requires tangible logical variant analyses and most likely leads to a surprising outcome, but who has time for that—just chant the slogan of saving humanity and take a chance by putting valuables at stake, and waiting for the desired outcome, wishing for favourable odds, cursing unfavourable ones, and the game of poker begins.