David Ignatius argues that Biden should keep "some of Trump's policies." He then lists things that Trump did that were "good." Namely, he believes that Biden should continue the Endless War. What's odd - and Ignatius comes ever so close to realizing this in his piece - is that Trump hated the Endless War, too. What he praises as Trump's "good" policies were really just examples of the foreign policy "Blob" remaining unmoved.
One of Trump's better instincts politically was resisting the idea of more Middle Eastern conflicts. For whatever reason, Trump seemed to "get" that his voters were disproportionately touched by these conflicts because of the requirements it put on troops. While the troops are not monolithically white and rural, they are somewhat disproportionately white and rural. Lunatics like John Bolton would've been fine with war with Iran. Trump never seemed interested in the military as an instrument of policy, so much as a prop to reflect on his personal grandeur.
If it IS actually true that the Iraqi government wants us to stay (I know the Kurds do), then...OK. But at this point, staying in Afghanistan is stupid. There are no positive goals being achieved there, only the absence of some negative outcomes. We are not making Afghanistan better (Kabul, maybe, but I'm not convinced).
If Biden could negotiate some sort of détente with Iran that included a return to the JCPOA and American withdrawal from Afghanistan, that could constitute a major policy achievement. If Afghanistan degenerates into a feudal state of competing sectarian warlords...that seems to be its fate. We have been there for nearly two decades and what we are doing isn't working. This is Afghanistan's problem now.
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