To add insult to injury, a guy named Abdul Ghani Marader has been named Afghanistan’s new president.  He was one of the founders of the Taliban in 1994 and brother in law to Muhammed Omar, the head of the Taliban who was forced into hiding by the US in 2002.  Marader was arrested and jailed in Pakistan by the request of the US in 2010.  Trump unilaterally released him in 2018 to negotiate the Doha agreement between the Taliban and US.  Since then he has consolidating his power especially after Trump surrendered to the Taliban at Camp David in 2020 and agreed to release 5,000 Taliban fighters.  On Monday, he waltzed into Kabul unopposed and immediately too up residence in the president’s palace after Ghani fled and the Afghan army delaminated in less than 10 days.

Trump seems to be the common thread throughout this entire catastrophe.  To make it perfectly clear:

• Trump released Marader in 2018
• Trump invited the Taliban (including Marader)  to Camp David in 2020, agreed to hand Afghanistan over to the Taliban and set May, 2021 as the date.
• As part of the deal, Trump released another 5,000 Taliban fighters from Afghan prisons.
• Trump then unilaterally withdrew half of US forces in December 2020, just before the insurrection, and the Biden inauguration.
• Trump trumpeted the withdrawal deal during his rallies in 2021, bragging about how he boxed Biden in.
• When the withdrawal turned into an easily predicted debacle, Trump immediately blamed Biden for the deal he had personally negotiated.

If you’re looking for anything else to be pissed at Trump about, this is it.

The rightwing noise machine, along with the circular firing squad of Team Progressive, are united in criticizing Biden for withdrawing from Afghanistan and sticking to the plan as the government collapses, Afghan politicians flee the country, and the Taliban return to the violent and brutal regime they controlled when we ran them to the mountains in 2002.  As I write this, insurgents are entering Kabul and closing in on the airport where diplomatic personnel and military are trying to evacuate.  It’s without a doubt a total shitshow.

But, it’s not a surprise.  Whether the US withdrew from Afghanistan in 2003, 2013, or 2023, THE RESULT WAS GOING TO BE THE SAME.  Like everything else W and Cheney fucked up, they most certainly fucked up Afghanistan.  The noble chase of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda into the mountains to kill him was botched, and rather than chase him into Pakistan, Bush/Cheney thought it was a really good idea to convert a culture born before the Dark Ages to a liberal democracy.  It was stupid, and anyone who can read a history book knew it.  Afghanistan is a 1st century culture in a 21st century world that has repelled invasions for centuries. At the time of Bush/Cheney’s decision to occupy Afghanistan, some of us predicted exactly what is happening today.  Oh, we were shushed by those who “knew better”, but it didn’t take a diplomatic genius to understand that the US was never going to succeed where the Russians, the Brits, the Greeks, the Mongols, and other empires attempted, and ultimately failed, to accomplish over that last 2,000 years.

Don’t get me wrong; I abhor every death and injury that occurred during the attempted occupation of Afghanistan over the last 20 years, but I said it then and will say it again now that the US incursion into and occupation of Afghanistan was almost as big a blunder as the invasion of Iraq which destabilized the region handing control over to Iran.  As bad a guy as Saddam was, he was better than handing more Middle East power to Iran and Russia.  NOW, not only is Iran dominant in the region, Afghanistan is again in chaos. Add that to chaos in Iraq and Yemen, and that is most certainly a major league shitshow.

This is not Biden’s fault.  This is the fault of over 100 years of terrible Middle East policy compounded by Bush/Cheney’s empire building and Trump’s idiocy.  That is where the blame lay.  Biden’s trying to clean it up.