When it comes to Afghanistan, I feel like there is strong merit to the argument that we should stay at least for the moment. Unlike Syria and Iraq, it seems to me that Afghanistan is a part of the world where we actually want to be if we can do it at low cost (which has been the case for the past couple years, albeit partly because of a deal with the Taliban).
It's adjacent to Pakistan, which is an unstable nuclear-armed country where we want to be able to intervene if necessary. Our presence there is helping prevent a genuinely despotic regime from returning, so there's real human rights benefits at this point. Also we had an actual reason to be there in the first place. At a minimum I'd much rather get all our boys out of Syria than out of Afghanistan, if I had to pick one.
When it comes to Afghanistan, I feel like there is strong merit to the argument that we should stay at least for the moment. Unlike Syria and Iraq, it seems to me that Afghanistan is a part of the world where we actually want to be if we can do it at low cost (which has been the case for the past couple years, albeit partly because of a deal with the Taliban).
It's adjacent to Pakistan, which is an unstable nuclear-armed country where we want to be able to intervene if necessary. Our presence there is helping prevent a genuinely despotic regime from returning, so there's real human rights benefits at this point. Also we had an actual reason to be there in the first place. At a minimum I'd much rather get all our boys out of Syria than out of Afghanistan, if I had to pick one.