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Afghanistan Isn’t Going Away
Ignoring it is not working.
“As the public’s attention shifts away from Afghanistan, Mr. Biden’s decision may seem less like a failure and more like a sober, even necessary end to a policy that was doomed from the start.” wrote Michael Kazin for the the New York Times on August 19, striking a hopeful note.
At that point the Biden Administration was likely still betting, as Kazin concluded, that the public would soon forget about Afghanistan.
Kazin’s article, “To Save His Presidency, Biden Must Tell the Truth About Afghanistan,” probably took more than a few progressives by surprise. The implication that President Joe Biden was misleading the public on Afghanistan and putting his administration at risk was mystifying at the time.
Things looked bad in Afghanistan alright; but Kazin, along with plenty of other progressives, believed the worst to be over. At least at first.
That was before a terrorist attack killed 13 military service people during the harrowing evacuation from Kabul Airport on August 26. Before last week, when a New York Times investigation exposed the U.S. military strike which followed as something far from the strategic action the American public was led to believe.
What was first billed as a decisive move to neutralize the immediate threat of a…