re: #95 No Malarkey!

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Good rejoinder about the Afghan-exit critics: reading the whole thing is recommended: though I would proffer a couple of counterpoints to Rothkopf’s analyses:
1. Most “critics of Biden’s strategy” aren’t, for the most part, going to know or care in the least about the facts on the ground, or any other mitigating factors regarding the Afghanistan withdrawals - it’s the “criticism” of Joe Biden and his Administration that is the major point: and if it has to rely on simpleminded war-jingo TV/action-movie tropes to make a point: well, that is likely exactly what the critics’ audience wants to hear, so reality is irrelevant.
2. I do take issue with one of Rothkopf’s theses: that the US has no “ongoing security interests” in Afghanistan. Yes, the country is isolated, far away, poor and backward, etc., but I think just dismissing it as an unimportant backwater may be an oversimplified (if understandable) reaction.

And on the same subject: a nice analysis HERE by Josh Marshall of a piece in the Washington Post about just WHY it was that the Afghan Government collapsed seeming instantly, and why the choice ended up being the Taliban being responsible for securing Kabul, or us (The US) doing it. RTWT.

The picture the WaPo used to head the article is gem: a bunch of armed Talibani clustered around the former Presidential desk in Kabul, with not a smile or gloat visible on any of them. The guy sitting behind the desk (on an Aeron chair I notice) is staring at that Kalashnikov on the desktop, and you know the thought-balloon is something like “OK - what the fuck do I do NOW??”