Ross: There was never going to be a good time to pull out of Afghanistan

I’ve seen Democrats and Republicans condemn the way the United States is leaving Afghanistan. Even people who agree it was time to go are disgusted with how it’s been done.

One of the critiques I’ve heard is that President Biden decided to leave in the middle of the traditional fighting season in Afghanistan, which runs from April to October. Had we delayed a few more months, goes the argument, the Afghan Army might have stood firm.

I, too, would like to think there was a better way to do this, so let’s run with that. Let’s presume we’d managed somehow to stay through October and that the Afghan Army, instead of dissolving, stood firm. Anyone who wanted to get out would have had easy access to the airport, and U.S. forces could have evacuated them quickly, and then evacuated themselves.

But then, how many Afghans would have actually wanted to leave under those circumstances? If everything was going according to plan, and the Afghan Army was running the country, and girls could stay in school, and there was the prospect of free elections, and generous American aid – why would people leave? My guess is the number of refugees would be a fraction of what we’re seeing now.

And we’d all celebrate the good news — Americans all leave peacefully, Biden comes out a hero, roll credits, the music swells, happy ending.

But since life is not a movie, we also have to ask: How long would that ideal solution have lasted?

What happens when the fighting season resumes? Suppose a few months after the happy ending, after all the Americans are gone, the Taliban moves in and that’s when the Afghan Army collapses – which is a pretty realistic scenario since we knew the whole nation-building exercise was flawed from the start.

Then what do you have? Just what we’ve seen these past weeks: tens of thousands of Afghans trying to leave – except – there are no U.S. soldiers to wave them through; no U.S. Air Force to fly them out.

Certainly, a lot better for Joe Biden politically because there are no Americans involved. But where would that have left our 100,000-plus Afghan allies, the people we profess to care so much about?

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