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<\/p>\nThe U.S. war in Afghanistan is\u00a0scheduled to end\u00a0on May 1. So says the deal with the Taliban negotiated by Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan appointed by the Trump administration and retained by President Joe Biden. If the deadline is met, the United States will finish our longest war a few months shy of the two-decade anniversary of invasion.<\/p>\n
But will the deadline be met? The Biden administration is waffling, the president calls meeting the withdrawal deadline “tough,” and this week\u2019s revelation that the U.S. footprint in Afghanistan is nearly 50% larger than previously thought (3,500 troops rather than 2,500) means the logistics of withdrawal would be slightly more complicated than anticipated. Meanwhile, the drumming insistence that it\u2019s too soon to leave \u2014 perhaps the steadiest beat in American politics for more than\u00a019 years and four presidential administrations \u2014 is only growing louder.<\/p>\n
Biden should ignore it. He was a\u00a0voice of\u00a0comparative restraint as a member of the Obama administration, and this inherited deadline would let him begin to deliver on his\u00a0pledge\u00a0to \u201cend the forever wars.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will never be smooth, but keeping this deal is the best foreseeable option. It stands the greatest chance of retaining some degree of Taliban cooperation. It gives Biden a unique political opportunity. And, crucially, it extricates the United States from a disastrously counterproductive intervention that will never succeed.<\/p>\n
Taliban cooperation is not required for U.S. withdrawal, of course, and premising our foreign policy choices on the whims of the Taliban\u00a0isn\u2019t reasonable. Still, if we\u00a0can\u00a0leave with a U.S.-Taliban pact in place to lower violence and stabilize Afghan politics, we should, and breaking faith on the May 1 deadline will make that nigh impossible.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t difficult to divine: Broken promises don\u2019t speed diplomatic progress. Moreover, the Taliban themselves have indicated\u00a0how much stock they\u00a0place\u00a0in\u00a0Washington honoring the May 1 departure date. Any alternative talks outside the schema\u00a0Khalilzad negotiated (and continues to negotiate in Qatar) are \u201cdoomed to failure,\u201d Taliban spokesman\u00a0Zabihullah Mujahid said\u00a0this month. Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban negotiator, warned Friday that U.S. troops\u00a0should not stay beyond May 1: “After that, it will be a kind of violation of the agreement. That violation would not be from our side. \u2026 Their violation will have a reaction.”<\/p>\n
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 21, 2021. (Photo: Presidential Palace via AP)<\/span><\/p>\n Honoring the deadline is in the Biden\u2019s domestic political interests, too. Every success would be his to claim. He could tout promises fulfilled and declare the exit evidence of his respect for the will of the American people, most of whom\u00a0say the war in Afghanistan was not worth\u00a0fighting and needs to end.<\/p>\n Afghan Interior Minister Masoud Andarabi said this month he believes \u201cAfghan security forces are fully capable\u201d of defending government-controlled territories, like Kabul, and precluding Taliban advances after the United States\u00a0is gone.<\/p>\n Yet insofar as there are setbacks and unintended consequences of U.S. withdrawal \u2014 as is\u00a0certainly possible, given that Afghanistan was\u00a0functionally in civil war\u00a0before America invaded and will remain so after we leave \u2014 Biden can blame those on his predecessor. After all, the White House can explain, the Trump administration set the date! The deal was done. Biden\u2019s hands were tied if he wanted to restore Washington\u2019s good name as a reliable negotiating partner, which he did.<\/p>\n What makes this a strong argument for the Biden team is that it\u2019s true. Or, at least, it should be.<\/p>\n Failure\u00a0all\u00a0around: <\/strong>Withdraw troops as Trump administration scheduled. The Afghanistan Study Group is wrong.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n If I sound a bit cynical here, it\u2019s only because the subject at hand is a futile two-decade war that has accomplished remarkably little at enormous cost. We\u2019ve churned through deployments\u00a0small and large,\u00a018 commanders\u00a0and trillions of dollars, much of it debt funded and\u00a0lost to waste. More\u00a0than 2,000\u00a0U.S. troops\u00a0have been killed and 10 times that many injured. Afghan civilian deaths numbered\u00a0over 100,000\u00a0between 2010 and 2020 alone; and Afghan casualties, including in the police and security forces, hit new highs\u00a0in recent years\u00a0as the U.S. air war surged.<\/p>\n And for what? Negligible effects on U.S. security and a record of nation building and \u201cspreading democracy\u201d that would be laughable were it not so tragic. Our record on helping Afghan women and girls is\u00a0particularly dismal. In 2010, diplomat Richard Holbrooke wrote in his diary, Biden told him: “I am not sending my boy back there to risk his life on behalf of women\u2019s rights, it just won\u2019t work, that\u2019s not what they\u2019re there for.”\u00a0Another decade has shown he was right on both counts.<\/p>\n Indeed, as Biden said a year ago on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” “women and or children and or people are being persecuted or being hurt” all over the place, but the U.S. military can’t “solve every single internal problem that exists throughout the world.”<\/p>\n If we want to help Afghan women,\u00a0and we should, supporting Afghan\u00a0women\u2019s organizations\u00a0and inviting Afghan women and their children to come to the United States as refugees will do far more concrete good than bombing their villages.<\/p>\n Misused military: <\/strong>Enough with America’s ‘thank you for your service’ culture. It’s betrayal, not patriotism.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Jarrett Blanc, principal deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Obama administration, argues that there is no way to justify “the human, strategic and financial costs” of our continued presence in Afghanistan: “It is long past time to accept the risks and difficult compromises of a negotiated settlement; they only become more severe the longer we delay.\u201d<\/p>\n That was true in 2019, when The Washington Post published his opinion column. It is even truer now.<\/p>\n If the Biden administration jettisons the May 1 agreement, the Taliban will use that betrayal to justify more violence, chaos\u00a0and perhaps even total rejection of diplomacy. It is no exaggeration to say canceling this deadline could lead to a U.S. presence in Afghanistan essentially unchanged (or even expanded) by the end of Biden\u2019s term. This\u00a0is not an acceptable risk, which means May 1 is our date to bring all our troops home.<\/p>\nBetter ways to help Afghan women<\/h2>\n