David Richmond

Aug 17, 2021

By DAVID RICHMOND The emerging debate over President Biden’s decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan has me befuddled beyond no end. I need someone to explain it to me like I am a high school junior. Just what is the alternative? Stay a little longer? Withdraw a little slower? Invest more money in the Afghan defense forces? Find a new president of Afghanistan? Please explain it to me. This was predicted and predictable. Many of us were opposed to the war in the first place. It may have been virtuous to send troops to capture Osama Bin Laden and remove Al-Qaida from the territory, but after that, then what? If anyone 20 years ago or today had read a “short” history of Afghanistan or paid attention to America’s debacle in Vietnam, they would have realized that unless we intended to invest tens of trillions of dollars and occupy the territory for 50 years, nation building was impossible in a country with the culture and history that Afghanistan has. Just ask the British, Germans and Russians. President (and Senator) Biden has been consistent in his opposition to the American presence in Afghanistan beyond the reasons stated above. I admire the president for having the guts to do what no other president in the 21st century was willing to do. He made sure that no American family would have to lose a husband, wife, son or daughter to a useless military conflict, that no family member would be the last to die in Afghanistan — David Richmond, Bakersfield