I often hear people across the political spectrum defending the Afghan withdrawal, and to me it just seems like an incredibly obvious blunder in hindsight. I just do not understand the rationale behind the various defenses of it, and in my mind it should be incredibly clear that a counterfactual world where the US remained would be vastly preferable.

To defend that (admittedly bold) claim, I want to put in perspective the full scope of what exactly the withdrawal cost us and what we gained, and show that on balance the withdrawal had way more harms than benefits.

Firstly and most obviously, no withdrawal means Afghanistan isn’t controlled by the Taliban. That means 37 million people aren’t under the heel of a jihadist dictatorship, the rights of women and girls aren’t systematically erased, and the nation doesn’t become a rogue and unpredictable actor on the global stage. More recently, the Taliban have been executing dissenters and ethnic minorities in enclaves, allowing the opium and heroin trades to flourish, and descending what was a flawed but livable nation into a theocratic hell. To me, this alone pretty much outweighs every other consideration by orders of magnitude, but we will get to the purported benefits of withdrawal shortly.

Secondly, it cost the US substantially in terms of international credibility. Afghanistan was a US led project 20 years in the making, and to perform a rapid and uncoordinated withdrawal only cost us hugely with the perceptions of our allies. Ukraine has revitalized that somewhat, but the withdrawal has felt serious damage to US guarantees.

Thirdly, Afghanistan was a potential ally with valuable strategic resources. Rare earth are especially significant, but their geographic position relative to other middle eastern threats was almost certainly a benefit to US operational capacity. Something we threw away for shockingly little.

So then, what are the supposed benefits that outweigh those incredible costs? As far as I can see it, there are four, none of which hold up to scrutiny.

1. Cost. It’s often cited how expensive the war was (with a total cost in the range of 1tn), but on an annual basis it strictly was not unsustainable by any means. 50 billion per year is a lot, but for a nation with a trillion+ dollar discretionary budget, I’d say that’s pennies on the dollar to keep a country from Taliban rule.

2. Legitimacy. To the idea that somehow a withdrawal would boost legitimacy by rectifying the failure of the war, the opposite has happened, and it’s only through the similar Ukraine crisis that legitimacy has been restored.

3. Electoral popularity. While in a vacuum it is certainly true that ending the war was a popular decision, it’s not exactly an issue that’s yielded significant popularity for any major democratic candidates, and wall to wall coverage of the fall of Kabul certainly didn’t do Biden any favors.

4. “We needed to get out eventually.” I’ve heard this argument so much, and my only question is… why? Why couldn’t we stay until the Afghan government had completely westernized and stabilized? Shit, why couldn’t we make Afghanistan the 51st state if that meant they weren’t going to be an evil dictatorship? Obviously I’m being hyperbolic with that last suggestion, but really, it will take more than a vague appeal to “needing to get out” to convince me that Afghanistan wasn’t substantially better off with the USA there.

So yeah, I think on the whole, the pullout was a mistake. Would love to hear some other views.