I didn't agree with it when Trump started pulling them out and I don't now. I guess there's nothing more American than invading a country, attempting to and failing to rebuild it and then give it back to the same people we fought to get rid of.
In the end we learned nothing from the fate of Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Mr Trump's administration carried out negotiations with the Taliban (in Doha) and signed a "peace agreement" (which the Taliban, needless to say, interpret most flexibly) which excluded the recognised Government of Afghanistan, who weren't even invited to attend the talks.
In this context, it doesn't matter that the Government is incompetent, somewhat corrupt and at times dysfunctional: It is still the internationally recognised Government, - and deserves the respect of being treated as such.
This is unconscionable, and utterly disgraceful.
It's unfortunate what is happening, but did anyone really not see this coming? We spent 20 years building up an army that crumpled in a few days. What were we supposed to do? Stay there another 20 years? Obviously we shouldn't have been there in the first place, but that's hindsight, not a solution. Afghanistan has never been a cohesive state. It's always been a loose collection of tribes. If we couldn't build up a viable alternative to the Taliban in 20 years, then what would staying there longer accomplish? "Nation building" there was a fool's errand.
Okay:
Let's take a few of the points in this post, and examine them.
Afghanistan is not a "loose collection of tribes" - and it never was; yes, the country is home to a number of different
ethnicities, (not tribes), but, until the late 1970s, - when it became a tragic pawn in the game of Cold War chess played by the USA and the USSR - it was a reasonably stable, and perfectly functional, and tolerably advanced - for the region and the time - central Asian state.
I know a number of people who visited Afghanistan in the late 1960s, when it was on the "hippie trail", a time when it was a lot more advanced and cosmopolitan, safe, and stable than was, for example, Pakistan.
Re "Afghanistan has never been a cohesive state", yes, the traditional preference has long been for decentralised political arrangements, but - and this is a big but - Afghanistan has been a nation state since 1747, a date, one might care to note, that predates the formation of the United States.
It was a founder member of both the League of Nations and the United Nations.
Re the armed forces dissolving, the US departure has been very poorly executed re both timing (autumn would have been better, when what is quaintly termed "the fighting season" is over and winter approaches) and ensuring that the Afghan armed forces were capable of using whatever equipment was left behind.
And the question of who pays the salaries of the armed forces remains a salient one; I have written it before, but Afghanistan did not collapse when the USSR withdrew their forces in 1989; rather, state collapse occurred in 1992 after the Soviet Union itself had collapsed in 1991, for the remains of the USSR were no longer in a position to pay the salaries of the armed forces of the state.
More to the point, yes, corruption has been an endemic feature of Afghan society (and of the armed forces - it was impossible to obtain accurate stats, for the ranks of both the military and police - and this was both deeply depressing and exceedingly frustrating - were undoubtedly fleshed out with "ghost soldiers" who drew salaries) but it should be pointed out that they have taken horrendous casualties over the past decade.
I spoke on many occasions with a man who - when I first met with him - was Chief of Police of Kabul - and with whom I also met frequently when he later served for years as Deputy Minister of the Interior; in early 2013, he told me that the police force was taking seven to ten casualties a day - a number that (he informed me) had increased to 11-14 casualties a day by the time I left the country nearly two years later.
This is not only unsustainable, - and makes a lie of the canard that says the Afghans won't (or didn't wish to) fight - but, it may also mean that many of those who did choose to fight are dead.
As are many of those impressive, informed, educated, and idealistic activists of civil society - politicians, parliamentarians, lecturers, lawyers/prosecutors/judges, journalists, reporters, writers, women's rights activists, public servants, NGO workers - those who helped try to make the country and society a better place, - who have been targeted (and assassinated, executed, killed, murdered, slaughtered) for at least a decade.
Early in my time there, - I could hear it from my office around two km away - the biggest bomb to go off in two years in Kabul detonated outside the Supreme Court, killing many (law clerks, lawyers, prosecutors, judges) of the people who worked there.
Unbelievable after all this time, the country is falling this fast. I feel bad for those who were thriving under the protection of America and it’s allies, and are now going to be in a worse spot than before.
However, this is a sign that it needs to be done. If after 20 years things are falling this fast, it proves it was a failed effort. The change will have to come from within the country.
Yes, but the disruptive, and malevolent role played by Pakistan - which armed, sheltered, supported, enabled and facilitated the Taliban (and has done so for well over a quarter of a century) also needs to be addressed.
And much of this suport may well have come from the sort of obscene levels of aid that the US has already paid Pakistan, which is not a regional actor that behaves in good faith.
Pakistan does not wish for a peaceful, stable, sort of democratic Afghanistan, and has done everything in its power to disrupt, and destabilise and undermine Afghanistan, and whatever government holds office in Kabul.
