Afghanistan War is over. Full Stop!

When President Jimmy Carter returned the Panama Canal, he knew that his decision was the end of his political future. But, he did it anyway, because it was the right time, to do the right thing.

In my opinion, Afghans are not familiar with peace. Instead, the Afghan people are always prepared for war. They don't care who the country's invaders are, because they are prepared to defeat those who want to occupy their country. 

President Joe Biden is willing to give up his political career to end this foreign entanglement. Once the pullout began, there was no safe way to quickly load up the million Afghans that say they want to immediately move to the USA.

Starting in September, remember to thank Joe Biden for his political bravery the next time you don’t hear about a U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan.

From Gary Novak, in Port Townsend, Washington

Another echo: From a humanitarian perspective, despite the terrible optics, our withdrawal from Afghanistan has turned out much better than the Biden administration hoped.

Our failure to see this is a result of our national humiliation about losing a war and the focus of the media on the chaos at the airport.

We decided the war was ultimately unwinnable and it wasn’t worth wasting more American lives. The Biden administration hoped the Afghan army could hold out for five months to two years, allowing us to clear out before the inevitable collapse and take over.

But the Afghans made the same calculations that we did: Why fight and die in a war when your side is ultimately going to lose? 

As a result, the Afghan war ended with a few hundred hard-liners dying in a few days, rather than tens of thousands with the wholesale destruction of cities and infrastructure.

Instead of applauding the relatively bloodless, inevitable turnover to the Taliban, we are outraged by the Afghan’s unwillingness to fight. We are shown endless loops of video of panicking crowds on the tarmac and we are horrified to hear of seven people dying in stampedes and falling off the wheels of airplanes.

Extricating ourselves from a lost war is going to be messy, but compared to all the other possible scenarios, nothing really bad has happened so far.

The Afghan evacuation is slow and messy, but many people are getting out. The Taliban, thus far, have been operating with unusual restraint for a conquering army, even tolerating some street protests without the anticipated massacres.

Our focus now should be on using America's economic power to encourage the more pragmatic leaders of the Taliban to establish a stable government with rights for women (Pakistan would be an appropriate Islamic model).

Bob Landry, in Port Townsend, in Washington.

Maine Writer post script- Although it was not smooth, the Afghan people suffered during the American withdrawal; but the bottom line take away points are:  (1) Afghanistan's president fled like a coward when the Taliban advanced into Kabul; and (2) America's involvement in Afghanistan and the military defense of a failed government is over! Full Stop!