I agree with Dubya. He got a lot wrong. But he got Afghanistan right.
His invasion (and the continuation of his anti-terror occupation policy) led to no more 9/11s for two decades. Trump-Biden can't take that achievement away.
Biden has initiated a new period and will bear the responsibility if his doctrine of disengagement results in more Islamist catastrophes.
I preferred Harry Truman's nation-rebuilding ideas, myself. He helped Europe and Japan recover after WW2 and thereby won the peace. America (as well as Europe and Japan) prospered as a result. Might Afghanistan and the whole of the Indian subcontinent have prospered with American guidance if Biden had stayed? I think that was the larger goal.
But short of that, the anti-terror model had succeeded in preventing new major acts of terror.
Now I think something new will emerge in that region, separate from an American perspective. What will it be? The best available hope is the re-emergence of India as a major democratic power and counterweight to China.
| 