20 August 2021

Biggest danger is to shrink from this fiasco

William Hague

In the end, the only surprise was that anyone was so surprised. I wrote in April, when President Biden announced his fateful withdrawal from Afghanistan saying “We’ll determine what a continued US diplomatic presence looks like”, that it would look like an evacuation. Today, that panic-stricken evacuation is underway. A total collapse of the Afghan army, once it was unsupported, was always a serious risk that should have been anticipated. History is littered with examples of large military forces capitulating if they feel isolated or poorly led. Think of the mass surrender of Italian troops in North Africa in the winter of 1940 to a British army they outnumbered at least four-to-one.

At the weekend, Biden argued that the Afghan collapse vindicated his decision

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