The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will top news headlines for days to come. As a supplement to those articles I offer two links containing perspectives not easily found in our mainstream media.

The first is “As America’s Imperial Ambitions Collapse, Washington Should Ask: Who Lost Afghanistan?” by Doug Bandow (Antiwar.com, Aug. 16). Bandow points out that there were two choices: “to leave or stay forever.” Of the outcome he writes,

Biden’s decision to end the 20-year war remains correct. Indeed, the experience of the last couple weeks demonstrates that there was nothing in Afghanistan to support. Two decades of effort created a Potemkin nation, illusory government, and faux armed forces.

A link to the full article is below.

The second is “Biden’s Prudent Decision to Withdraw from Afghanistan” by Daniel Larison (Eunomia, Aug. 13). Larison credits President Biden for doing what a string of his predecessors (including Obama, under whom he served as VP) did not do. Larison writes, “It doesn’t say much for our political culture that it takes far more political courage to end a pointless war than it does to start one,” and

The U.S. set goals in Afghanistan that were too ambitious and the costs of pursuing those goals exceeded what the public was willing to support over the long term. The next time that the U.S. is tempted to try to build a new state in a country that it doesn’t understand very well, we should remember the utter failure of the war in Afghanistan…

A link to the full article is below.

Neither writer defends the manner of the rushed withdrawal, which is currently being denounced on all sides.

The links:

As America’s Imperial Ambitions Collapse, Washington Should Ask: Who Lost Afghanistan?

https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/bidens-prudent-decision-to-withdraw