“There’s plenty of blame to go around for the 20-year debacle in Afghanistan — enough to fill a library of books. Perhaps the effort to rebuild the country was doomed from the start. But our abandonment of the Afghans who helped us, counted on us, staked their lives on us, is a final, gratuitous shame that we could have avoided. The Biden administration failed to heed the warnings on Afghanistan, failed to act with urgency — and its failure has left tens of thousands of Afghans to a terrible fate. This betrayal will live in infamy. The burden of shame falls on President Joe Biden.”

I’m breaking my usual guideline of not engaging in hot takes on major issues to call attention to this important piece in the Atlantic.

George Packer has the authority to write on the subject of abandoning Afghan allies because he has been following these Afghans for some time. The news outlets have been reporting on the plight of these people intensely for the last few months and with some regularity now for years. This is the second major betrayal of a group of our allies in just the last few years.1

Why a group of people with anything to lose would ever again work with the United States would be beyond my comprehension.

Biden’s Betrayal of Afghans Will Live in Infamy | The Atlantic

1. Selling out the Kurds on the Syrian border was callous and duplicitous. That was to be expected from Donald Trump. [return]