The reckoning for U.S. foreign policy elites – politicians, policymakers, generals, diplomats, think tanks that had access and influence – is long overdue. It’s time for a painstaking inquiry into what went wrong to ensure that it doesn’t happen again in the era of great power competition. One model for accountability could be the Church Committee hearings of 1975, which exposed abuses by the intelligence community and federal law enforcement that so shocked Americans that some agencies were nearly shut down altogether. Americans today would likely be similarly outraged as they learn that senior officials were aware not only of the impossibility of victory but also of rampant bacha bazi (pedophilia), bribery, and corruption, and other scandalous conduct in Afghanistan.