Taliban Take Kandahar, Prepare To March On Kabul

link

I don't understand this enough to deserve an opinion, really. 

It's seemed to me for a couple of years now that we weren't going to be able to turn the region into anything like a decent modern state. So we'd have to either basically stay forever or leave. I no longer think we can democratize everybody. So I've thought, for awhile now, that we should probably leave. 

I do wonder whether we couldn't maybe shift gears a bit that the Taliban is on the march and wipe out some columns from the air. Now that they're out in the open, why not kill as many of them as possible and make them think twice about the blitzkrieg strategy? 

But, in general, it seems that the Afghans aren't going to stand up in sufficient numbers to defeat the crazies--ever. So our options are really (i) leave the region--or "country" to its fate now or (ii) leave it to its fate later. It's terrible. But--and, again, I'm speaking as an ignorant layperson--there are some problems we just can't solve. It's like we tried to go back in time and make the people then more like us. It might have worked--but it didn't. 

I shudder to think what life is going to be like under the Taliban for the people of Afghanistan. Though, for all I know, not all that much worse than it seems anyway.

I guess the point is, sort of: I do think we need to start moving toward the exit in a determined way--and not just Oh, y'know, someday... But it's not clear to me that we ought to do it like this. This seems like a real turning-point. Now that they're out of their hidey-holes and less mixed-in with civilians...wouldn't it be possible to at least send out the A-10s and Cobras and wipe out some big groups of them? I just don't know enough to know.

[Oh. WSJ EB says that Biden pulled out all our air power. Well that does not sound like it was a very good idea.]