Your article is well written and sincere George Bohan.

The messy departure is not the most important point here -- actually pretty soon it will be forgotten and Biden won't loss much politically.

The tragedy is that after all the costs, human and financial, we come away with nothing -- or very much less than nothing. There were small but significant achievements that should have been protected. Many Afghans (and especially women) were enjoying a much better standard of living than 20 years back. Afghanistan was no longer a WAR for us and we had managed to move it into a shape (still with some work) that was sustainable. Biden dismissed advice to him and went with domestic public sentiment to simply "get out of there". In my view he has absolutely nothing to be proud of.

One of the huge drivers of instability in the world is the subjugation of women. There is a direct correlation between prosperity (or lack of) of countries and inequality of the sexes. Nuturing those feminine shoots in Afghanistan would have demonstrated to the world women's value. Instead we decided it didn't matter.

All 4 Presidents are at fault. The words that sum up why we failed in Afghanistan are indifference, carelessness and ignorance.