When Will the Last Pair of American Boots Leave Afghanistan?

Max Boot reads the tea leaves in the WaPo and fears that all previous talk of a long-term partnership with Kabul will be soon be rendered meaningless.

I think significant elements of the administration, starting at the top, are looking for a way out of Afghanistan and they are using disputes with Karzai as an excuse. The president who once called Afghanistan the necessary war appears to be motivated now primarily by the necessity of disengagement, at least as he sees it. [Not just "necessary" but the "war we must win"! --ed.]

The results for U.S. interests and for Afghanistan are likely to be dire, because if U.S. troops leave, so will our NATO allies. And the U.S. and its allies will be unlikely to continue pouring in the billions of dollars necessary to keep the Afghan security forces and the Afghan government functioning. That makes a collapse, of the kind that occurred after the Soviet withdrawal, much more likely–and with it a return of the Taliban and Haqqanis and their al-Qaeda allies.

In the old days, people talked about the lessons of the US being deeply involved in Afghanistan in the 1980s then suddenly pulling out and the whole thing becoming such a mess we had to go back in. Not much talk about that anymore.