August 21, 2021 ☼ afghanistan ☼ biden
Source: The Washington Post - Link
President Biden this past week laid out a defiant defense of his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, a reversal of two decades of U.S. engagement that crystallizes an emerging Biden Doctrine — a cautious worldview that prizes alliances but also narrows the aperture of American influence.
America, with plenty of rebuilding to do at home, should no longer be willing to intervene in languishing foreign conflicts, Biden said. The lives of American troops are not worth risking in those battles, he added, and nation-building is a non-starter. That is a view broadly shared by Americans in both parties even amid the scenes of chaos and heartbreak at the Kabul airport in recent days, as desperate Afghans try to flee a Taliban takeover.
The collapse was inevitable. I think the only thing that could have helped would be to ignore the Afghani government and have begun mass evacuations much sooner. We would have had to relaxed the barriers to resettlement in the US as well.