If you read only one article about the Afghanistan war each week, make it this Washington Post article. If you read dozens of articles about the Afghanistan War each week, make sure to add it to the list. It is a very, very eye-opening piece of reporting that illustrates to what degree our failure in that theater has to do as much with shockingly poor conception, management and execution as it does with the difficulty of the task.
It also shows to what degree foreign policy failures are determined, often years prior, by domestic policy failures. Just like it often takes an illness to appreciate good health, it takes a war to appreciate USAID.