Let’s Not Pretend That the Way We Withdrew From Afghanistan Was the Problem →

Ezra Klein, writing for The New York Times:

To state the obvious: There was no good way to lose Afghanistan to the Taliban. A better withdrawal was possible — and our stingy, chaotic visa process was unforgivable — but so was a worse one. Either way, there was no hope of an end to the war that didn’t reveal our decades of folly, no matter how deeply America’s belief in its own enduring innocence demanded one. That is the reckoning that lies beneath events that are still unfolding, and much of the cable news conversation is a frenzied, bipartisan effort to avoid it.

Any fan of The Wire is familiar with the Tommy Carcetti “Bowls of Shit” scene. Hope Biden’s got a spoon handy.