But our abandonment of the Afghans who helped us, counted on us, staked their lives on us, is a final, gratuitous shame that we could have avoided. Perhaps the effort to rebuild the country was doomed from the start.
There’s plenty of blame to go around for the 20-year debacle in Afghanistan-enough to fill a library of books. He is the author of Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, and The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. About the author: George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
