It’s over thankfully:
The U.S. officially ended its military presence in Afghanistan on Tuesday with the final flight out of Kabul, concluding two decades of American involvement touched off by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Bravo. Only fifteen years too late.
The US will be immeasurably stronger for the withdrawal in every way.
It will be fiscally much strong than staying, saving itself tens of trillions of dollars.
Its military can refresh and rebound out of an exhausting war without end.
It will be much freer to focus on China and the defence of democratic allies closer to home.
Nor will it be such a clear jihadist target.
Conversely, commodity riches will draw China into the graveyard of empires where it will very likely waste trillions instead.
There will be other challenges. Global terrorism may rebound and Europe will be upset for that reason.
Yet these are not the issues of the hegemon. Its challenge is retaining that position and the exit is all good in that regard.
Do-nothing Malcolm has finally ended the nauseating symbolism over substance consensus:
Mr Turnbull backed Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s position to end the “neoconservative agenda of using American military might to remake the world”, but said both presidents made mistakes in the withdrawal. Despite their political differences, Mr Turnbull said, Trump and Biden were “absolutely on the same page” on wanting to end the costly wars, which was “hard to argue with”.
“The whole series of American-led wars in the Middle East have absolutely done more harm than good, there’s no question about that. You can’t gloss over that. Particularly the intervention in Iraq – the big winner out of that was Iran, and it accelerated the radicalisation of much of the Islamic world,” Mr Turnbull told this masthead.
Yep. Should have left Afghanistan many years ago. Should never have gone to Iraq.
