Biden’s Deadly Afghanistan Gamble

It is almost surely the case that President Joe Biden’s Afghan withdrawal was propelled by political considerations rather than any pressing moral or foreign-policy imperative. Biden, who for 20 years has taken whatever the most popular position happened to be on Afghanistan (so, all of them), believed he could get a quick, much-needed political victory.

You can still witness the cynical polling-centric takes from Biden defenders like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who only this morning, a few hours before American troops were being murdered by suicide bombers at the Kabul airport, was telling his co-host Mika Brzezinski,...