Left-wing commentator approves US withdrawal from Afghanistan

A veteran international affairs specialist calls President Biden’s decision to leave Afghanistan belated but correct.

In Népszava Gábor Horváth, who served as Népszabadság’s Washington correspondent during Barack Obama’s first term as President, welcomes the decision of the Biden administration to leave Afghanistan by the 20^th anniversary of 9/11. He thinks the US was right to invade Afghanistan after the terror attacks in New York and Washington, because the Taliban regime had offered a safe haven to al-Qaida. However, he adds, American troops should not have remained there so long. Horváth blames successive American commanders for convincing their Presidents that victory was near, although they had no clear idea of what victory might actually mean. The Taliban could freely retreat to Pakistan whenever in trouble, then reorganise and reoccupy vast swathes of the country, he points out. Horváth is convinced that the war effort was hopeless. It has taken the lives of 130,000 Afghans as well as of over two and a half thousand allied soldiers, including seven Hungarians, two of whom were women. Horváth doesn’t try to predict what will happen to Afghanistan once all NATO forces are withdrawn.

Tags: Afghanistan, NATO, US