On the collapse in Afghanistan.
There's a saying about bankruptcy: Penury happens slowly, and then all at once. So too went the collapse of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. There was once a cogent theory of the case for a continued American presence there. Until this weekend, when there wasn't. |
For years and years — and a few more years after that — the Pentagon's strategy was that the Afghan security forces would stand up, and their American allies would stand down. Congress nodded along and wrote the checks. |
It was an elegant formulation based on the idea that all the Afghans needed was better training and a cheat code for unlimited American airstrikes to hold off the Taliban. |
Billions of dollars, thousands of lives and countless scarred minds and bodies later, that strategy collapsed as the Taliban swept through the provinces, then the cities, then the capital. The Afghan government took to the skies rather than face the brutal reality on the ground. |
If only the legions of Afghans who gave their all in support of the U.S.'s vision could have found seats on those flights out. |
As The Times editorial board wrote Sunday: "The Biden administration was right to bring the war to a close. Yet there was no need for it to end in such chaos, with so little forethought for all those who sacrificed so much in the hopes of a better Afghanistan." |
There's a saying in the military: Lieutenants talk tactics; generals talk logistics. Hopefully, there are more than a few of the senior brass in the Pentagon planning to do all in their considerable power to exfiltrate those Afghans who risked so much to help so many and now stand to lose it all as their country implodes. |
Just because the idea of a flourishing Afghan government went bankrupt doesn't mean that those least responsible should be left to pay the bill. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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