Delaying Withdrawal from Afghanistan Is a Mistake

The Biden administration doesn’t think that it is bound by agreements made by the previous administration:

Some of the president’s advisers also believe he should not feel bound by the Trump-era agreement with the Taliban, which established May 1, 2021, as the U.S. withdrawal date in exchange for a pause on Taliban offensives against Americans. “It was not a deadline that we set,” Psaki said.

The May 1 deadline gives Biden a way out, and it is bizarre that he doesn’t want to take it. The fact that the agreement was negotiated by the Trump administration gives him political cover at home, and it would allow him to be the one to complete the withdrawal without ever having taken ownership of the war. Leaving Afghanistan on time would force Biden’s antiwar critics to acknowledge that he actually delivered on an important campaign promise, and it would put his hawkish critics in the awkward position of insisting that Americans should continue to fight and die in a pointless war. Most important of all, it would finally extricate the U.S. from a conflict that it cannot win but can only prolong, and it would bring the remaining troops out of harm’s way.

Delaying the withdrawal amounts to kicking the can down the road. Sooner or later, U.S. forces will leave, and the Afghan government won’t be any more capable of standing on its own in six months or two years or four years than it is today. Staying past the May 1 deadline practically guarantees that U.S. troops will come under attack and some of them could be killed, but it will achieve nothing else except delaying the same outcome. If Biden wants the public to trust him on this or any other issue, he has to make decisions that earn that trust. Dragging his feet until it is too late to withdraw on time and then telling the country that withdrawal isn’t logistically feasible do the opposite.

Biden’s real reason for stalling seems to be that he hopes to reach some negotiated settlement between the Afghan government and the Taliban:

Some administration officials privately argue the opposite: that maintaining the U.S. presence for a few additional months is the only way to keep the country from spiraling out of control after the withdrawal, as it could pressure the Taliban to cut a power-sharing deal with pro-American Afghans. Many outside national security analysts believe it’s that hope ― rather than the operational concerns Psaki and Biden have cited ― that has Biden leaning toward the delay.

If it seems far-fetched to think that breaching our agreement with the Taliban will encourage them to strike a bargain with the government in Kabul, that’s because it is. The U.S. has to face up to the reality that the Afghan government that we have spent twenty years propping up and arming is very likely too weak to survive, and that means that keeping our troops there for another six months or a few more years won’t make a bit of difference. Withdrawing from America’s longest war was never going to happen under ideal conditions, and delaying the inevitable will just make it worse.