Who Lost Afghanistan?

Bitter defeat.

by Charles R. Kesler

It was truly macabre, President Joe Biden’s plan to end America’s military involvement in Afghanistan on September 11 of this year, 20 years to the day after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, plotted and promoted by al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. As it happens, the military and political scene in that unhappy country is deteriorating fast, and the inglorious deadline for withdrawal has been advanced to August 31.

That spares us, at least, commemorating September 11 as a day of double infamy, coming and going, as it were.

What did we intend to accomplish in that country? Our difficulty in deciding what we thought we were doing over there during “America’s longest war,” as Biden called it on July 8, showed up in the shifting terms we used over the years to describe it. “Invasion” sounded too hostile, “war” too all-in, “liberation” too hopeful, “occupation” too protracted, and so we tended to settle on vapid euphemisms like our “involvement” or “presence” in Afghanistan..............is there such a thing as “the Afghan people”?.........To Read More.....