Doomed

 This is why the Times still matters. It's a deep expose of the failure of American counterinsurgency efforts in Kunduz province in Afghanistan. 

Its focus is the decision to empower local warlords to fight the Taliban, even though those warlords had reputations for lawless brutality. Since Americans had few insights into Afghan culture, they were simply operating under the "enemy of my enemy is my friend." The problem is that, fundamentally, their remit was not to defeat the Taliban, it was to build a viable democratic Afghanistan. 

Funding warlords meant that centuries of blood feuds were supercharged by US weapons and money, creating the failed state that predated America's chaotic withdrawal in 2021. The militias had no sense of fighting for "Afghanistan" and instead fought for their own plunder, to settle scores and to wrest control for themselves. This provided the perfect opening for the Taliban. 

Among the many scourges of war is the anarchic effect it has on governance. Civic order breaks down, as killing and violence becomes routine. Afghanistan has always been more a geographic expression than a political one. It's a multiethnic state with as many vendettas as there are valleys. 

The US never understood this. In the brief aftermath of deposing the Taliban, the decision to pivot towards Iraq before finding and killing bin Laden deprived American forces of the ability to disarm these militias. Fighting that war "on the cheap" (at least in terms of manpower) was the fatal flaw in our efforts in Afghanistan, and that decision was made by 2003.

Biden was 100% right to pull the plug and deserves very little of the blame for what happened.