Sudden departure of US raises difficult questions about president’s approach to the conflict
Just last month President Joe Biden defended his Afghanistan pullout by saying that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely”.
And while Americans were left recalling the harried final days of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, the US’s biggest adversaries saw a potent sign of America’s vulnerabilities and shaky claim to leadership after the tumult of the Trump years.“Nobody wants Afghanistan, once again, to be a breeding ground for terror,” UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday. “It’s fair to say the US decision to pull out has accelerated things.
Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican who often clashed with Trump, said it was a “shameful, Saigon-like abandonment of Kabul”. After he announced his decision in April to withdraw forces by September, Biden said the US would maintain an “over the horizon” capability to step back into Afghanistan if needed to counter terrorists.
It was not just America’s longest war, but a costly one as well — four presidents in succession spent nearly $1-trillion on a far-off conflict that killed about 2,400 American soldiers, but none until now found a way to leave. In justifying his withdrawal, Biden said there was little to be gained from staying longer.
In the end, the result was a US government looking like it got outplayed by Taliban leaders who told them what they wanted to hear: we’ll stop killing Americans and you’ll get your troops out. Trump’s administration, in talks sealed by secretary of state Michael Pompeo, agreed, and the deal was handed to Biden when he took office.
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