Afghanistan: Leaving, but not quite yet

President Biden agrees U.S. troops should leave Afghanistan—someday, said Alex Ward in Vox .com. At his press conference last week, Biden said it would be “hard to meet” the May 1 deadline to pull all U.S. forces from the country that was set in the peace deal the Trump administration made last year with the Taliban. Biden added, however, that he “can’t picture” the 3,500 U.S. troops remaining into next year. He blamed the “logistics” of safely removing all our equipment and troops so quickly, but sources and leaked documents indicate the real agenda is to wait until the U.S. and the United Nations can forge a detailed peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government before we lose the “primary source of leverage”: troops.

The idea that six more months will buy a better deal is based on “hope, not reality,” said Daniel DePetris in WashingtonExaminer.com. It took both sides seven months to negotiate a prisoner exchange last April. Since December, the proceedings have been essentially “frozen in place.” The Biden administration ignores the May 1 deadline at its peril, said Trita Parsi and Adam Weinstein in Time.com. Since the peace deal went into effect 13 months ago, the U.S. military has sustained zero military casualties from encounters with the Taliban. But the extremist group has made it very clear that a “violent counterinsurgency” awaits should the U.S. stick around. “The war will go on endlessly,” and once again Biden will be forced to greet “American caskets at Dover Air Force Base.”

The president faces an “anguishing choice,” said Robin Wright in NewYorker.com. Some military experts contend we could prevent al Qaida terrorists from setting up camp again through improved intelligence and drone strikes. But if we pull out, the “fragile, deeply divided” Kabul government will quickly fall to the Taliban. Women’s rights would devolve to the Stone Age, as the Taliban have promised to re-impose draconian Islamist laws forbidding women from holding jobs, getting an education, or traveling without burqas and a male chaperone. Our choice in Afghanistan is really “no choice at all,” said Eli Lake in Bloomberg.com. Intelligence officials recently advised that “al Qaida is gaining strength in Afghanistan,” operating under the Taliban’s protection. It currently costs between $10 billion and $20 billion to field our forces in the country. That’s “a small price to pay for preventing the next 9/11.”