What Went Wrong in the Afghan Pullout? Biden’s Not Saying
It’s vital to understand what led to the chaotic withdrawal, but the administration’s new “after action review” instead blames everybody else.
The longest war.
Photographer: Simon Lim/AFP/Getty Images
This month marks two years since President Joe Biden ordered the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, bringing America’s two-decade war there to an end. One might hope that Washington would be engaged in a searching debate about what went wrong in that conflict. So far, alas, it’s not clear that hindsight is making America much wiser.
See, most recently, the Biden administration’s “after action review” of the US withdrawal. That document is not an objective assessment of a searing episode. It is an exercise in blame-shifting and rationalization.