FOREIGN POLICY
The Legacy Of Joe Biden On The Afghan War
The last-minute airport attack in Kabul was simply the last achievement of the Afghan government in failing its own people.
With the 2024 election about to ramp up, here’s a well-needed reminder that it was not President Biden’s fault that Afghanistan refused to stand up for itself. We could have prolonged this inevitability for 10 more years, and I believe, in 2031, the Kabul government would still surrender in 8 days.
There was virtually no fighting for Kabul. Afghanistan on paper has roughly 300,000 soldiers, a number inflated full of soldiers ghosting their service and selling their war supplies on the black market. The Afghan army allegedly outnumbered the Taliban almost 3–1, and they had American-made, technologically sophisticated gear and humvees paid for with lots of America’s past two decades’ worth of available infrastructure, healthcare, and social spending, amounting to more cash than America spent on the Marshall Plan across all of Europe, adjusted for inflation.
Contrast Afghanistan’s collapse to the nationalistic self-defense effort in Ukraine. The Ukrainian people rose up against the second strongest global power, and dedicated themselves with astounding civic cohesion to…
