How to set $83 billion on fire

Although the foreign policy establishment is going to blame as much of this as possible on Biden, what’s happening in Afghanistan undeniably is a massive failure of the foreign policy establishment’s 20 lost years of failed promises in Afghanistan:

The surrenders seem to be happening as fast as the Taliban can travel.

In the past several days, the Afghan security forces have collapsed in more than 15 cities under the pressure of a Taliban advance that began in May. On Friday, officials confirmed that those included two of the country’s most important provincial capitals: Kandahar and Herat.

The swift offensive has resulted in mass surrenders, captured helicopters and millions of dollars of American-supplied equipment paraded by the Taliban on grainy cellphone videos. In some cities, heavy fighting had been underway for weeks on their outskirts, but the Taliban ultimately overtook their defensive lines and then walked in with little or no resistance.

This implosion comes despite the United States having poured more than $83 billion in weapons, equipment and training into the country’s security forces over two decades.

Building the Afghan security apparatus was one of the key parts of the Obama administration’s strategy as it sought to find a way to hand over security and leave nearly a decade ago. These efforts produced an army modeled in the image of the United States’ military, an Afghan institution that was supposed to outlast the American war.

There are no good answers about what to do here, only less bad ones. But why would or should Biden listen to the same people who assured Obama that a SURGE would allow for the creation of an independent army that could stand up to the Taliban? Almost all of whom were also proponents of the even bigger fiasco in Iraq?