In retrospect it is amazing how we kept the war running for almost 20 years without aborting the conflict sooner.
Why? Why did the fighting drag on for so many years? What were we trying to achieve and what did we gain out of all this expenditure and sacrifice?
And perhaps most important of all, who will voters blame for this failure in 2022 if the country collapses to the brutal Taliban-Islamist regime?
Both Republican President Trump and Democratic President Biden wanted to leave Afghanistan this year, a rare moment of bipartisan agreement.
But leaving in 2021 means voters will have a full year to see the consequences before the 2022 Midterms. And if the situation worsens, if the militias overrun the Afghan military and the country collapses to barbarism, how will voters take that with them to the polls?
I foresee a political hot potato here that nobody wants to be holding when the next election cycle notches up.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 76%. (I'm a bot)
> It signed a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 to withdraw its troops in exchange for a Taliban promise to denounce armed groups such as al-Qaeda and keep Afghanistan from again being a staging arena for attacks on the US. There is little evidence the Taliban are fulfilling their part of the bargain.
> On Friday, US President Joe Biden will meet at the White House with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and chairman of Afghanistan's High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah to discuss US troop withdrawal amid a surge in fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban across the country.
> Just last week a brutal assault by the Taliban in northern Faryab province killed 22 of Afghanistan's elite commandos, led by a local hero Colonel Sohrab Azimi, who was also killed and widely mourned.
> Diplomats, Western officials, generals, tribal elders and politicians on all ends of Afghanistan's political spectrum regularly beat a path to Karzai's door in the heart of the Afghan capital.
> To Pakistan's military and civilian leadership, Karzai said Afghanistan wants "a civilised relationship if Pakistan adopts an attitude away from the use of extremism against Afghanistan, this relationship can grow into a beautiful relationship, into a very fruitful relationship for both sides".
> "To the warring sides in Afghanistan, Karzai said:"I'm very emphatic and clear about this, both sides should think of the lives of the Afghan people and the property fighting is destruction.
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