Scott talks to Danny Sjursen about the leaked Biden administration plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The document evidently represents the Biden administration’s new take on the deal reached with the Taliban during the Trump administration, which laid out a May 1st deadline for withdrawal. But Sjursen stresses that this plan isn’t really new—in fact, there’s nothing “new” to be done or said about Afghanistan at all. The Kabul government simply doesn’t have widespread control over the country, and the Taliban are in a position of relative strength. Nothing America can do, short of utterly destroying the country, can change the facts on the ground. We should have left years ago, but the best we can do now is leave as soon as possible.
Discussed on the show:
- “The leaked U.S. plan to end the war in Afghanistan” (The Washington Post)
Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. army major and former history instructor at West Point. He is the author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge and Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War. Follow him on Twitter @SkepticalVet.
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Scott Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from this website. He’s the author of the 2017 book, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. Visit https://scotthorton.org