AAQ makes a number of good points. I’m less convinced that any combination of interim steps would have been effective and only would have deferred the inevitable chaos. Trump kept talking about honoring our commitments to those who assisted U.S. troops and diplomats while essentially gutting the State Department and HHS offices responsible for processing the special visas for those Afghans. Biden obviously moved at a glacial pace to restore those capabilities while either deliberately or naively ignoring the accelerating collapse of the Afghan military and government. However, given the facts on the ground once the Taliban took control, the generals agreed that once Kabul was lost, they needed to get out asap, which is what they did with incredible success (125,000 airlifted out) withsurprisingly minimal casualties (notwithstanding the tragic deaths of 13 heroes last week). We should have left Afghanistan 10 years ago and another week, month or year would only have resulted in greater losses.
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