David Ignatius hasn’t given up in his quest for American Empire in Afghanistan. in his latest Washington Post column he predicts a “summer of pain”:
Biden has a last chance to salvage some of this wreckage when President Ashraf Ghani visits Washington on Friday. He can’t offer Ghani U.S. military muscle — it’s too late for that. But he can pledge financial and diplomatic support that, perhaps, could allow Ghani’s government to avert total collapse. And he can mobilize the international consensus — which includes Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran — against a Taliban military takeover in Kabul.
Biden had hoped for an intra-Afghan peace agreement before U.S. troops departed. He won’t get that, largely because the triumphal Taliban have dragged their feet. Resolution of the conflict — on the battlefield or in negotiations — won’t come until after U.S. troops have left. The Taliban appear startled by the speed of their advance; they have begun privately messaging Americans about the mundane realities of governing, such as operating dams or maintaining a power grid, U.S. officials say.
“I don’t think the president understood how precarious the situation would become†as soon as he announced on April 14 that he planned to withdraw all troops by Sept. 11, says Kagan. Biden’s pledge to remove U.S. military forces came as the Afghan fighting season was beginning. Rampaging Taliban rebels seized about 50 district capitals after May 1. But they’ve held back from capturing big provincial capitals such as Kandahar or Jalalabad, perhaps because they fear U.S. reprisals or maybe just because their forces are stretched.
concluding:
Americans grew tired of this war, but they won’t like scenes of our departure, either. What Biden owes Afghanistan and America both is a frank explanation of what he’s doing — and how he plans to keep faith with the Afghan people to provide as honorable a retreat as possible. But for Afghanistan, and perhaps Biden, too, this will be a summer of pain.
What he doesn’t explain is how that would have been different if we had withdrawn our forces in 2005 or 2010 or 2015. Or in 2025 or 2055 for that matter. Every president since 2001 has promised that we would withdraw from Afghanistan. None of them have ever had a coherent plan for leaving a durable and reasonably friendly Afghan government behind when we did so. There are multiple reasons for that including a) that is beyond our power; b) they had no idea of how to accomplish that; and c) some in the State Department and DoD wanted to stay there forever regardless of what presidents said.
All of these conditions have been in place since we invaded Afghanistan and presidents starting with Bush promised to leave. This was always the way our Afghan adventure would end and everyone not in clinical denial always knew that was the case.
