Are you kidding David Rothkopf? Biden is no hero. He will probably make it through this OK because few really care about Afghanistan and this unfortunate episode will fall away.

There were some real achievements from our "do-gooding" in Afghanistan that were buried, not seen or touted. Many Afghans were enjoying remarkably better lives than they were 20 years ago. Did it come at enormous cost to us and them? Absolutely. But that was no reason to toss those gems of success because they were small. They should have been protected. Not completely, totally and without question but rather the case weighed and considered.

Our presense in Afghanistan had been managed into a place where American lives were NOT at great risk and the financial cost was something we could afford. We could have stopped calling it a war -- or at least ours.

The previous administration and then Biden bent to a popular sentiment calling for Afghanistan to end. Trump and Pompeo essentiallly surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban and Biden simply followed that path. No hero. No hero at all because that awful capitulation could have been countered. Biden's part was pobably not cowardice but pig-headedness and folly. You can delght in a weaker and now less effective America around the world. I do not.

We have retreated to our cave (admittedly these United States are a big one) and the Taliban and others have come out of theirs.