No. of Recommendations: 9
And Biden was powerless to change any of it. And he tossed in Bagram Airbase as deal sweetener.
Actually, politically yes. The American people wanted out. The military wanted out. We had already been there for 20 years . Deciding to go the other way and build up a fighting force large enough to matter would have taken years, and it was not clear that we had any way to execute 'victory' in any meaningful way anyway.
Best way to stop digging yourself into a hole is to stop digging.
Even Trump recognized that, but he was clever enough to leave Biden with an untenable situation. The exit was badly handled, true, but then nearly every war that doesn't end with overwhelming, massive victory ends that way. See: Vietnam, German forces leaving France in WWII, German forces leaving Russia in WWII, etc.
(No matter how many out airlift out, there are going to be more that want to go. I'm glad we got the USians, and a reasonable number of Afghans, but after that *truly* I don't care - except for the humanitarian side of me. However the realistic side of me is that Trump handed Biden a plate of crap, and Biden disposed of it. Probably got a little on him, and to Trumpies, incapable of realpolitik, gave them something to laugh at.
