Clear emergence of two perspectives on Af'stan: 1) US couldve stayed at low cost, maintaining stalemate. 2) Taliban were making gains even w/ intensifying US airpower; Afghan troops/state were showing no sign of improvement. Sympathetic to (1) but ultimately more persuaded by (2)
US presence in Af'stan post-2018/19 was not especially high cost. And it enabled a substantial NATO training mission. But equally the pre-Doha-deal, pre-withdrawal status quo was not a steady state. The choice was probably, eventually, going to be between escalation & withdrawal.
Whatever rights/wrongs of withdrawal, am also sceptical it undermines US credibility in Asia. Yes, a humiliation. But everyone knows US left not because it lacked capacity to stay, but domestic politics shifted, surges didn't break deadlock & AFG became peripheral to US interests
But considerable uncertainty in all of this. This (👇 is a reasonable future-counterfactual. I can see plausible scenarios where US is full of remorse, and also those in which CT approach keeps problem in check at far lower cost.
https://twitter.com/DavidDPaxton/status/1426268476143017989?s=19
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