America’s Failure in Afghanistan Is Bipartisan
Biden’s decision to withdraw troops was the right one despite an apparent lack of planning. But Republicans aren’t off the hook, either.
In spite of what some might smugly suggest online, it doesn’t require an advanced degree in international studies to understand that yet another empire has failed in Afghanistan. If the death toll from the 20-year war hadn’t long given away that inconvenient truth, the fact that it only took the weekend for the Taliban to immediately retake the entire country confirms the irrefutable reality that the United States continues to perform poorly at “nation building.” It’s about time an American president even hinted at the glaring failure that is the war in Afghanistan.
That doesn’t necessarily mean we should give President Joe Biden rousing applause for stating the obvious, though.
On Monday afternoon, Biden delivered a speech from the East Room of the White House to defend his decision to pull troops out of the country and end the longstanding conflict on which America has spent nearly $1 trillion since 2001. Biden felt compelled to respond to growing international backlash amid footage of desperate Afghans literally leaping onto military airplanes in an effort to escape a return to being…
