Eli Lake, Columnist

Trump’s Afghan Troop Withdrawal Puts Biden in a Jam

The president-elect wanted to end the war 11 years ago. Now he may have to send American forces back.

November 18, 2020 at 10:33 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

He gives the orders, for now.
Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

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As President Donald Trump tries to end America’s longest war, he has settled on a compromise. Instead of withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Christmas, as he boasted in a tweet in October, he will be leaving behind a small counterterrorism force.

It’s tempting to view the development with a sense of relief. A full withdrawal from Afghanistan, or for that matter Iraq, would have been a humiliation for the U.S. on the world stage and a likely prelude to the collapse of two elected governments for which America has invested significant blood and treasure.