I just got a long message from a man who's angry - and understandably - about AFG, but if he's out there reading, I'll just say: I agree with you and you don't even realize it.
The fall of Kabul is turning into a Rorschach test and explains a lot about our national madness.
/1
The fall of Kabul is turning into a Rorschach test and explains a lot about our national madness.
/1
No one really knows what I think about whether we should have stayed or left. So I'll tell you. My answer, for years, was: Stay and be serious about it and don't try to do it on the cheap. But if we won't commit and we're just guarding posts, then leave and accept the risk. /2
"Be serious" about it means, for one thing, decide if you really want to try to modernize a nation like AFG. If you want to go full Marshall Plan, do it. But don't keep infusing cash into black holes and then report all is well. That's not a strategy. /3
Anyway, the more important point is that we are nationally incoherent about this. Citizens are enraged not by any one policy - well, some of the folks who know what's about to happen are - but by who they think is getting credit and who benefits. This is nuts. /4
The gentleman who left a message was scathing, but polite (strangely), but he assumed that because I don't like Kristi Noem I therefore back everything Biden's doing and always did. And some folks on the left think my concerns are just neocon righty "stay at all costs" stuff. /5
This - THIS - is why Biden had to pull us out. We cannot make policy in a country of enraged partisans who will take positions based on where they think the other guys *are not* standing. That kind of deranged partisanship is not worth one soldier's life. /6
We long ago lost the national will for the mission - or even to *pick* a mission - in AFG. Based on that, I support leaving. But my preference was to stay. We don't leave places (like NATO and Korea) where we've paid a high price. That's my feeling. But not like this. /7
But again, there is no chance of a national debate about this. We are not a serious people. We do not hold consistent preferences and we are not willing to think about costs and risks. We don't even realize when we might be in *agreement* enough to support a policy. /8
And this is why I'm saying that the collapse of Kabul is on us as a nation. On a country that wouldn't be serious and think about hard choices long before today. More tomorrow in @TheAtlantic. /9x
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