Dereliction of Duty

The Western defeat in Afghanistan is profound. Comparisons with the fall of Saigon in 1975 miss the point that America and its allies were not defeated on the battlefield but lost their moral resolve and surrendered to the enemy that took the country and Kabul without much of a fight. Such was the incompetence and negligence involved in pulling out that warnings about fleeing Afghanistan went unheeded, intelligence was inadequate or ignored, planning lamentable, and execution disgraceful. The recklessness of the retreat is distinct from the problem of Western presence for twenty years, but the manner of both staying and leaving is a betrayal of the West’s best traditions—honoring obligations to its own citizens, to all the Afghan people who helped Western countries, and to ordinary Afghans who were promised a democratic state but now face the consequences of the Taliban takeover

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