Well, looks like the war in Afghanistan is done. Good. But with an asterisk, I suppose. Let me try to sort it out here.
I have started collecting my thoughts for a giant post in the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attack, so I don't plan to go into that in depth here. Instead, I have been trying to weigh how to respond to this recent news. The end of war is always good. The goal was to get Bin Laden. That happened (allegedly...) a long time ago. We would all have been better off if the war had wrapped then. Of course, it would have been better still if the war never began.
A lot of people have their undies in a bunch because the Taliban is taking over. But then, if the puppet regime can't stand on its own, why waste effort propping it up? Besides, the Taliban didn't mastermind terror attacks against America. No Taliban every tried to declare my neighbors "nonessential." They were people rightly angry about a foreign invasion, no matter how awful their regime might have been and might now become again.
I'm an anarchist, so I'm no fan of any governments. However, I also recognize that intervention historically reinforces the power of the worst despots by giving them an external threat to justify their usurped power. So,the best bad option is still getting out and letting Afghans determine their own future. Besides, the lines on the map don't really apply to the real tribal politics at play there, and Afghan political hegemony isn't what western politics portray.
I don't know what to make of the images showing captured war materiel. Some may be old, some may depict irreparable empty shells, but in any case, there was massive waste on top of two decades of murder and destruction. Why didn't the military plan for proper demobilization and retreat? They had time to make plans. Is this incompetence or deliberate malevolence? I'd believe either one.
So, all told, if Biden doesn't screw things up or pull some bureaucratic reclassification nonsense, it looks like war in Afghanistan might be over. I'm also suspicious that this means repositioning troops for conflict elsewhere instead of a real end. But I'll tentatively give the creepy kid-sniffer a single point of approval if this does pan out. How he's gonna claw his way up through the rest of his massive point deficit stemming from his decades in Mordor on the Potomac remains to be seen. I'm also curious to see whether this portends the end of the US empire the way Afghanistan marked the decline of Britain and the USSR. We can always hope.
Addendum
It is now August 31st. The withdrawal continues to be an absolute mess, but Biden seems to be trying to stick to his schedule nonetheless. I would like to remind readers that the Taliban, Al-Qaida, ISIS, etc. are not just different labels for the same faction. There are deep religious and cultural divides in the Islamic world with competing or downright antagonistic groups vying for power. I don't pretend to understand the distinctions, but I know they exist, and I hate seeing bad analyses conflate them all.