Key points

• An immaculate withdrawal from Afghanistan was not possible. The fundamental mistake in the U.S. exit plan was its reliance on the Afghan government and security forces being able to stand on their own for 90 days or more, an assessment from U.S. military and intelligence officials. Instead, it collapsed in days.

• In response, a panicked rush to HKIA ensued. Despite challenging, precarious circumstances, including terrorist attacks that reportedly killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and injured 18 others, the U.S. is currently implementing perhaps the largest single airlift mission in history, evacuating as many as 20,000 people in one day. Reports from U.S. officials suggest more than 116,700 people have been evacuated, including 5,400 Americans, between August 14 and August 31.

• Maintaining a U.S. presence in Afghanistan may have delayed the Afghan government’s collapse, but it would not have prevented it. Retention rates for Afghan security forces were low, and corruption in the Afghan government was endemic. Many Afghans also viewed the government and military as illegitimate because of its reliance on support from foreign powers.

• The current situation in Afghanistan is precarious, and conditions could deteriorate—that is why removing all Americans and as many Afghans as possible by August 31 is paramount. However, it is important to acknowledge the withdrawal could have been significantly worse. That rapid dissolution of Afghan security forces meant the Taliban took Kabul with minimal violence. The likely alternative—a drawn out, street-by-street battle in a city of more than 4 million people—would have resulted in a more dire humanitarian emergency.

• Nobody should celebrate the Taliban’s takeover, but it is better than a prolonged civil war with an eventual Taliban victory anyway. To govern, the Taliban need things from foreign powers that moderate their behavior. With much to lose and a “return address,” they can be deterred and coerced.

• The Taliban’s new circumstances are one reason Afghanistan will not necessarily become a “safe haven” for international terrorists. Al-Qaeda is a decimated shell of its former self. The Taliban suffered immeasurably for letting them operate two decades ago, and likely learned from the experience.

• The Taliban’s desire to live and rule create a strong incentive to prohibit Al-Qaeda from planning and launching attacks against the U.S. from Afghan soil. Most important, however, is the vastly improved U.S. counterterrorism apparatus since 9/11 and the greater political will to use it.

• Retaining a U.S. troop presence after August 31, thereby breaking the end date that in effect followed through on the 2020 Doha agreement, would likely result in the Taliban again targeting U.S. troops and remaining Americans. Staying would also have dragged out the civil war, which killed and injured thousands of Afghan civilians each year.

• The Taliban control Afghanistan, and U.S. policy must acknowledge that reality. It makes sense for the U.S. to keep open lines of communication with the group. Supporting anti-Taliban factions would needlessly complicate the ongoing evacuations of Americans and could stoke retaliation by the Taliban or a proxy organization after the withdrawal is complete.

• If anything, U.S. “credibility” is enhanced from exiting Afghanistan. The U.S. capability and will to act in a future scenario, in another part of the world with vital U.S. interests, is uninfluenced by ending a failed and costly enterprise in which no core U.S. interests were at stake.

• Staying in Afghanistan weakened the U.S. and distracted from higher priorities elsewhere. If anything, other countries—friends and foes alike—should view the decision to withdraw as revealing an improved U.S. ability to discern core from peripheral missions abroad.

• If China and Russia attempt to deepen their involvement in Afghanistan after the U.S. exit, one of two scenarios is likely: (1) They fail like the U.S. did and endure a waste of limited resources in the process, or (2) they expend their own resources to increase stability and take more responsibility for a country which is far more of a proximate threat to them than to the U.S.

The collapse of the Afghan government is an indictment of nation-building wars

• The rapid dissolution of the Afghan government and security forces during a week-long Taliban march to Kabul revealed the futility of the 20-year nation-building project in Afghanistan.

• U.S. support for the Afghans over 20 years cost more than $1 trillion dollars and resulted in 2,448 U.S. service members killed and more than 20,000 wounded. Billions of dollars went to training the Afghan military, which essentially refused to fight the Taliban as U.S. forces left, precipitating the state’s swift collapse.

• The U.S. intervened militarily in Afghanistan after 9/11 to (1) decimate Al-Qaeda and (2) punish the Taliban for hosting those terrorists. The U.S. military achieved both objectives within months.

• Rather than admit success and exit, the U.S. expanded its mission into a 20-year nation-building campaign, which meant prolonged and costly counterinsurgency warfare. The decision that U.S. security required a stable Afghanistan proved a mistake of epic proportion.

• Political leaders, generals, and self-declared counterinsurgency experts proclaimed Washington had the power and expertise to create an efficient, democratic state that ruled across Afghanistan. Tragically, policymakers believed them.

• The U.S. withdrawal and evacuation of Afghan employees of U.S. forces should have gone better. But the collapse of the Afghan government was basically inevitable once the U.S. left.

Propping up a Potemkin government in perpetuity was not an option

• The Taliban’s takeover demonstrates the group’s resilience and the U.S.-backed government’s weaknesses: corruption, inept leadership, infighting, and inability to resolve political differences.

• The U.S. has spent roughly $1 trillion dollars in Afghanistan, including $89 billion building, training, and equipping Afghan security forces—and incurred future obligations that could surpass $2 trillion. Despite this investment, few challenged advancing Taliban forces and many units chose to surrender.

• That this spending bought a military that collapsed in a week as U.S. forces withdrew demonstrates that the U.S cannot build a functional military on a rotten state foundation.

• The 20-year state-building effort proved that massive influxes of foreign money and troops could not repair a government’s deficiencies.

• Years of U.S. military and political leaders opining in congressional testimony and to the press about the capability and esprit de corps of Afghan forces have been revealed as falsehoods or incompetence. Those who amplified these myths own the tragic results, not those who sought to end a failed enterprise.

• That almost everyone was surprised by the speed of the Afghan military capitulation is testament to the strength of the mythology painstakingly forged about their capability.

• The irony is that the Taliban’s defeat of the government Washington spent so much time building brings Afghanistan closer to peace than it has been in decades. But the challenges Afghanistan poses to central governance will hinder the Taliban as well, and a new insurgency of some kind is likely, whether or not Washington funds it.

• No one was prepared to fight for the Afghan government once U.S. troops left. This would have been the case whenever U.S. troops left.

The alternative to withdrawal was not the status-quo

• Extending the U.S. military presence by an additional few months, a year, or 20 years would not have had any more success in creating a stable nation and military than the last 20 years of failure—in part because the U.S. military presence was a cause of resistance and insurgency.

• Many Afghans viewed the U.S. as an occupier and the Afghan government as tainted for its dependence on outsiders. This aided the Taliban and undermined the Afghan government. The Afghan government’s corruption and poor governance further ensured it lacked popular support.

• Nor was maintaining an indefinite stalemate an option. The Taliban had made territorial gains since 2015, and the lull in attacks on U.S. troops in the last year was an outcome of the February 2020 Doha agreement. Staying without an end date would have led to more attacks and more U.S. causalities and probably required another influx of U.S. forces.

• The choice for the U.S., then, was either to stay and increase troop numbers, yet again and with no way to overcome long-standing problems, or to complete the withdrawal. The White House deserves credit for choosing the latter.

Withdrawal was the right decision

• Afghanistan’s present situation is tragic for Afghans, but the U.S. exit serves U.S. security interests.

• The U.S. should continue to evacuate not only Americans but also Afghans who helped the U.S. and may now be in mortal danger and help them find new homes.

• There was never going to be an immaculate exit from Afghanistan, and it is important to separate tactical errors in the withdrawal from the strategic wisdom of leaving.

• Pulling the U.S. out of Afghanistan is a long-overdue recognition that 20 years of attempted state-building was a costly mistake, wasting resources and distracting from higher priorities at home and elsewhere.

• The U.S. retains a sophisticated ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) capability and global intelligence networks to defend against anti-U.S. terrorism. The U.S. capability for thwarting terrorism wherever it originates is light years ahead of where it was before 9/11.

• The Taliban committed to policing Afghanistan against international terrorism. If they do not do so, the option to attack them again remains.

• In the end, the 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan is a tragedy and a warning against trying to win other people’s civil wars for them that should be remembered.