I've read countless bad takes by commentators on Afghanistan, but this one seems to crystalize the problem, in particular this part:
One would think that after a half-century in Washington, Biden would have internalized this truth and done a bit more to minimize the ugliness of Afghanistan. He would have seen the hot potato hurtling toward him and put on oven mitts. George W. Bush passed his failed nation-building project off to Barack Obama. Obama cranked it up, then dialed it back and dished it off to Trump. Trump surrendered to the Taliban at Doha, but managed to delay the rough end of the bargain beyond the range of his own responsibility.
Biden simply reached up and grabbed the potato with both bare hands, seemingly heedless of how it would burn.
Do you see it? People like Von Drehle admit that Afghanistan was lost. It was a failed mission. But Biden...something something something.
Biden willing to "take the hit" on Afghanistan is one of the best examples of presidential leadership that I've seen, up there with Obama insisting on a ground force to kill Bin Laden.
We should be rewarding a president who has done the right thing but also the hard thing. Instead, he's being pilloried.
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