Thread by @vermontgmg

THREAD: A quick reminder that, as Afghanistan falls, all of the following can be true:

https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1427230855039180802

1) All Biden had left by 2021 were bad options, but it didn't have to be *this* bad. This cake was baked a long time ago; missteps as early as 2002 and the distraction invasion of Iraq meant that we mishandled and mis-fought this war for twenty years.

2) I don't know anyone knowledgeable about Afghanistan who ever imagined that this would end differently. The reason we stayed for 20 years was the unspoken shared assumption that the Afghan government couldn't stand on its own.

Would the government we left behind last 3 years? A year? 90 days? 30 days? A week? At some point, it doesn't really matter. This was where things would end up.

3) Four presidents have mishandled this—and all share blame (most of all: Bush). Most recently, the Trump administration set in motion a destabilizing series of actions that made a bad-but-stable situation worse.

4) All of that said, the Biden administration does own *HOW* we left and the human toll of these final, all-too-desperate hours show a lack of planning that should forever be a moral stain on this administration.

tl;dr: We owed the Afghans better.

5) It’s just heartbreaking to see Afghanistan fall to the Taliban—again—on the eve of the 20th anniversary of 9/11. So much blood, so much treasure, and here we are again.