Afghanistan

I was going to write something about President Biden's withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan eventually, but with the sudden fall of Kabul and the return of the Taliban to power after twenty years, I have to say something right now.

I think it's obvious that the efforts to put a stable government in Afghanistan has shaky from the start, and there wasn't enough done to get said government on a firm footing.  But with the now-deposed Afghan movement so corrupt (a government President Ghani abandoned) and the troops and national police fighting the Taliban for little more than a paycheck to prop up such a corrupt enterprise, the return of the Taliban was inevitable.  Our few successes - killing Osama bin Laden, integrating women in to the power structure- was overshadowed by the attempts to reform Afghan society, stop attacks in the cities, secure the countryside, and neutralize the Taliban in general that were doomed to failure because we only threw money and weapons at the problem and didn't really get to understand the Afghan people.

I don't think it had to be this way.  We might have been able to find a better way to help the Afghans set up a government and trained them without looking too much like foreign occupiers - the very thing the Afghan people are inclined to resist the most - and get out sooner.  Any hope of securing a stable Afghan government was probably dashed when we unnecessarily invaded Iraq - which, ironically, is working out better than Afghanistan.  Relatively speaking, of course.

One thing I agreed with Trump with was taking action to avoid getting into foreign wars like the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In this new age, we have to fight disease and climate change instead of each other, maybe President Biden understands that we can't fight wars like that anymore.  In fact, he made it clear that he didn't want to pass this war on to his successor.

And what happens in Afghanistan going forward is anyone's guess.  But it won't be pretty.