If the collapse of Afghanistan and the US policies which brought about the debacle we witnessed yesterday had occurred in the 1980s, whole forests' worth of newsprint would have been required to document the various causes. Thankfully, in the digital age, most of the BS is online, so at least we are better off ecologically speaking.
Joe Biden got it right yesterday when he said it would not have mattered if America spent another 83 billion dollars to prop up the government and military we installed in Afghanistan. The result would have been the same 5 years or 50 years later. The foreign policy and military elites of our country are committed to a policy of defending the American Empire even as its underpinnings melt away in the 21st century. Forever wars in places like Afghanistan are to these people the price the rest of us must pay for the privilege of letting them decide the fate of the world.
In the frenzy of the moment, let's not get caught up in blaming tRump or Biden as the architects of the stunning events in Kabul. The "loss" of Afghanistan began the day the shrub, Cheney and Rumsfeld began to plan the invasion of Iraq. To their credit, tRump and Biden had the courage to at least begin the reversal of a shameful and wasteful episode in our history. It may take a while, but they will be judged more kindly in this regard than their predecessors, including Obama.
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