[FONT="]Commanders knew that the afflictions of the Afghan forces had never been cured: the deep corruption, the failure by the government to pay many Afghan soldiers and police officers for months, the defections, the soldiers sent to the front without adequate food and water, let alone arms. In the past several days, the Afghan forces have steadily collapsed as they battled to defend ever-shrinking territory, losing Mazar-e-Sharif, the country's economic engine, to the Taliban Saturday.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Biden?s aides say that the persistence of those problems reinforced his belief that the United States could not prop up the Afghan government and military in perpetuity. In Oval Office meetings this spring, he told aides that staying another year, or even five, would not make a substantial difference and was not worth the risks.[/FONT]
[FONT="]In the end, an Afghan force that did not believe in itself and a U.S. effort that Biden, and most Americans, no longer believed would alter the course of events combined to bring an ignoble close to America?s longest war. The United States kept forces in Afghanistan far longer than the British did in the 19th century, and twice as long as the Soviets ? with roughly the same results.[/FONT]
[FONT="]For Biden, the last of four U.S. presidents to face painful choices in Afghanistan but the first to get out, the debate about a final withdrawal and the miscalculations over how to execute it began the moment he took office.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Under former President Donald Trump, ?we were one tweet away from complete, precipitous withdrawal,? said Douglas Lute, a retired general who directed Afghan strategy at the National Security Council for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. ?Under Biden, it was clear to everyone who knew him, who saw him pressing for a vastly reduced force more than a decade ago, that he was determined to end U.S. military involvement,? he added, ?but the Pentagon believed its own narrative that we would stay forever.?[/FONT]
