The ugly reality is that American presidents have to make hard choices from a menu that offers no good options. In choosing to withdraw, Biden accepted increased ownership of the risk that a Taliban-governed Afghanistan could indeed become the haven for a future mega-terrorist attack on the United States.
Could Afghanistan become the base for another 9/11 terrorist attack that kills thousands of Americans here at home? Watching images of the collapse after two decades of investment in Afghanistan, it is easy to agree that we should have managed a less chaotic exit. But the current frenzy of second-guessing will soon be behind us. The consequential question for Americans is: what comes next? And there, the biggest red flag being waved by critics of President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all American combat troops is the specter of another 9/11. As former Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster put it on Sunday: “We learned 20 years ago on September 11, jihadist terror in Afghanistan won’t stay in Afghanistan.”
