America Should Never Have Withdrawn From Afghanistan

By Austin Colm ‘25
Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” 
People across the nation have been comparing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan to the botched exit from Vietnam nearly fifty years ago. Current President Joe Biden was only a first-term Senator in 1975 when the U.S. pulled out from the Southeast Asian nation, after a long and unpopular war. His opinions however, were strong. 

Then-Senator Biden felt that it was vital for the US to pull out of Vietnam, as it was a hopeless situation. His feelings did not go without notice; Biden’s supporters in the Senate at that time were shocked. The Senate, however, permitted President Ford to send millions of dollars to the evacuation of Americans in Vietnam. Biden referred to it as a ransom. 
After the withdrawal, Biden spoke to the Seattle Daily Times, saying that, “[it] seems to me we’ve learned an important lesson about careless military involvement abroad.” It’s debatable if the United State’s long military involvement there was careless, but Biden said he had learned an important lesson.     
The United States withdrawal from Vietnam very closely mirrors the withdrawal from Afghanistan. At the end of the day, the United States can have diplomatic relations with a communist state, but the recent fall of Afghanistan resulted in the country being run by the terrorists of the Taliban. After twenty years of nation-building, America unfairly abandoned the country, leaving it to ruin. 
President Biden should have foreseen the fall of Afghanistan coming and not withdrawn. Twenty years of US involvement in Afghanistan led the Afghans to become dependent on the US Military, and the troops pulling out gave the Taliban the perfect opportunity to take over. 
University of South Florida student Teegan Oshins reported in the USF student newspaper The Oracle that, “This could have been avoided if the troops stayed in the country until the Taliban had little to no chance of obtaining the city to protect the Afghan people and its capital.” Biden said there would be no situation where Americans would be helicoptered off the rooftops of buildings; yet the opposite happened. Not only were Americans getting lifted away by helicopters, but the airports were overrun with people fleeing in fear. 
Sune Rasmussen from the Wall Street Journal reported that, “harsh punishments, violence, and a crackdown on basic freedoms are becoming the reality [in Afghanistan]”. Afghanistan is regressing backwards after years of American-induced reform, thanks to that same country’s abandonment. Perhaps if it had stayed, Afghanistan could have survived, but it did not, thanks to a withdrawal that never should have happened.