Our picks: The Afghanistan decisionWe Lost the War in Afghanistan Long Ago | Disaster in Afghanistan Will Follow Us Home | Why the Taliban Won, and more

Published 17 August 2021

Supporting Biden’s decision

·  Biden Was Right

·  We All Lost Afghanistan

·  Biden Could Still Be Proved Right in Afghanistan

·  We Lost the War in Afghanistan Long Ago

·  Why the Taliban Won, and What Washington Can Do About It Now

Criticizing Biden’s decision

·  America’s Withdrawal of Choice

·  America’s Global Standing: Biden and the World

·  Joe Biden’s Bungled Afghan Exit Is a Calamity for America and the West

·  America May Pay Dearly for Defeat in Afghanistan

·  Disaster in Afghanistan Will Follow Us Home

Supporting Biden’s decision

Biden Was Right (Charles A. Kupchan, CFR)
The rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s military and governing institutions largely substantiates US President Joe Biden’s skepticism that US-led efforts would ever have enabled the government to stand on its own feet. Even two decades of steady support failed to create Afghan institutions capable of holding their own.

We All Lost Afghanistan  (P. Michael McKinley, Foreign Affairs)
Two Decades of Mistakes, Misjudgments, and Collective Failure

Biden Could Still Be Proved Right in Afghanistan  (Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times)
I’d invoke one of my ironclad rules about covering the Middle East: When big events happen, always distinguish between the morning after and the morning after the morning after. Everything really important happens the morning after the morning after — when the full weight of history and the merciless balances of power assert themselves.
And so it will be in Afghanistan — for both the Taliban and President Biden.
As for the Biden team, it is hard to imagine a worse morning after for it in Kabul. Its failure to create a proper security perimeter and transition process, in which Afghans who risked their lives to work with us these past two decades could be assured of a safe removal to America — not to mention an orderly exit for foreign diplomats, human rights activists and aid workers — is appalling and inexplicable.
But ultimately, the Biden team will be judged by how it handles the morning after the morning after. Biden made a claim — one that was shared by the Trump team — that America would be more secure and better able to deal with any terrorist threats if we were out of Afghanistan than if we stayed embedded there, with all the costs of people, energy and focus.
The Biden team essentially said that the old way of trying to secure America from Middle East terrorists through occupation and nation-building doesn’t work and that there is a better way. It needs to tell us what that way is and prove it out the morning after the morning after.