4 Comments

I agree that pulling out of Afghanistan is ultimately the right call, but I wonder if you have any thoughts about the moral aspect of the decision? It seems that, as in many of our Middle East conflicts, Cold War era policies are directly responsible for the state the country is in now. If we created this mess, don't we have a responsibility to help the Afghan citizens, or at least acknowledge our mistake?

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the best thing we can do is let large numbers of Afghans into the US

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I would agree with this if I felt 3,500 troops was a massive drag on our resources and severely hampered our ability to focus on China. The United States has thousands of troops deployed throughout Europe, and many more elsewhere in Asia (and the Middle East).

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I think the world has legitimate concerns about Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, et al. but I wouldn't want to see any of those issues become a pretext for the next great-power war. To put it crudely: is there some grand bargain available where human rights get thrown under the bus while the US and China agree to cooperate on climate? That seems like the best realistic outcome.

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