Testing Our Resolve

In the First Anglo-Afghan War, a time so noisy with emirs and usurpers, the British lost up to 40,000 lives, 50,000 camels, and almost broke the treasury of the highly profitable East India Company. American adventurer “General” Josiah Harlan, who had fought for the East India Company in other conflicts, predicted the outcome three years before, at the time the misadventure began: “To subdue and crush the masses of a nation by military force, when all are unanimous in the determination to be free, is to attempt the imprisonment of a whole people: all such projects must be temporary and transient, and terminate in catastrophe.”