President Biden’s Afghan Pullout Looked Good — Until It Didn’t

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Aug 17, 2021

In Iraq that policy appears to have had more success. The U.S. still has about 2,500 troops in Iraq, helping local forces contend with what remains of the Islamic State group.

Yet, in Afghanistan, even as American jets still were attacking Taliban positions in July, Biden continued his plans to pull out of that country. Some observers have questioned, with good reason, why Biden stuck with his plans to pull out of Afghanistan, while leaving a similarly sized force in Iraq.

As a draftee in the final years of long, drawn-out Vietnam War, I appreciate the pressures rising in both parties to end this country’s “neocolonialist” and “neoconservative” impulses that too often have tried to promote democracy in countries that weren’t ready for it.

But our missions in Iraq and Afghanistan were directly tied to perceived threats against our country, the same reason we currently have more than 170,000 troops in 170 countries. That’s one reason why, even though I was drafted in the Vietnam call-up, I wound up working with our NATO allies in Germany.

Occasionally you hear political candidates in both parties complain, as candidate Trump did, about “endless wars” and that we have too many troops in Europe, Asia and elsewhere around the globe. Yet, there were more troops in the Middle East after Trump became president than before his ascent to the Oval Office.

Tens of thousands of American troops remain deployed in such war zones as Somalia and — even still — Syria, plus such long-allied countries such as Germany, South Korea and Japan.

In time, will our Afghanistan pullout look like a sudden abandonment of our commitment to stability? Could it even slip back into providing a new safe haven for al-Qaida or other terrorist groups?

I’d like to think the new Taliban leadership is smarter than that, but I wouldn’t bank on it.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)