Biden was right to end our war in Afghanistan

The images of the evacuation of Americans and allies from the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, are heartbreaking. But withdrawing our troops from that country was the right thing to do.

President Joe Biden laid out the case clearly Monday, speaking the truth that all except extreme war hawks and political opportunists realized long ago.

“We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: Get those who attacked us on September 11th, 2001, and make sure al- Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again,” Biden said. “We did that.”

“Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building,” Biden said. “It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy.”

But we spent 20 years, thousands of lives and billions of dollars propping up an Afghan government that we hoped would be a democracy and an ally in the region.

The collapse of that government and the military we trained, paid and outfitted in mere days is proof that nation building in the country known as “the graveyard of empires” was a fool’s errand.

How many more American service members would Biden’s critics sacrifice there? How many more millions of dollars would they spend?

Certainly, there’s reason to question the apparent intelligence failures that missed the unprecedented collapse of the Afghan military, which, as near as we can tell, made no effort to stop the Taliban takeover. Again, Biden was right when he noted the unwillingness of Afghans to stand up for themselves.

“We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.“

More time, money and American lives were not going to change that.

The reality is, the Taliban now control Afghanistan. They will install a theocratic government that will run counter to American ideals. We can hate that while realizing it’s beyond our power to stop it.

What we must do now is begin the process of using diplomacy and economic power to influence the leaders of Afghanistan the way we do in other countries with which we have strong disagreements, but not troops on the ground.

Biden showed wisdom and decisiveness in ending a 20-year war. He’ll need both in the days ahead.