Afghanistan

 Because this is 2021 in post-America, hard and fast takes on this are, like school-district mask mandates, whether global climate conditions necessitate urgent collective action, and whether there is anything systemic about whatever degree of racism still exists in our society, likely to outnumber more multifaceted conclusions. 

I don't say this as an excuse to equivocate. Anybody who doesn't assert that this is a foreign policy debacle of historic proportions has a woefully underbaked understanding of what is happening, in my book.

The US State Department begging the Taliban to spare our embassy in Kabul, the beheading of Afghan government troops who have surrendered, the drawing up of lists of girls and women between the ages of 15 and 45 in the conquered provinces for the purpose of forcing them to marry Taliban fighters, the influx of jihadis from the UK, Libya, Syria and Pakistan, China's indication that it is prepared to recognize a Taliban government, and the loss of intelligence capabilities add up to an absolute disaster. 

Using this to score points against the Biden administration is an exercise in sleaze, given Trump's plans to host a Taliban delegation, back when "peace" talks were underway, at Camp David on September 11 of last year, and his endless-war talk since entering the political arena in 2015. 

This is not to say that Americans haven't grown tired of US presence in Afghanistan. 20 years is a long time. But is there a widespread understanding that we've only had a relatively small military footprint there for many years?

A development like this doesn't happen in a vacuum. Following as this does on the heels of two other colossal Biden-administration foreign-policy blunders - allowing completion of the Nord Stream pipeline in Europe, and inviting a team from the UN Human Rights Council to come to the US to assess our societal health regarding race relations - it's apt to leave allies as bewildered as Trump's erratic approach did. 

This feels like the catalyst of ramifications to come. The way we were holding those ramifications at bay was far from perfect, but telling the Taliban "have at it" is going to prove grimly consequential.