But not pulling out seems to be just delaying the inevitable, and a continued presence is expensive and arguably incendiary/destabilizing to the whole region, so I can understand doing it.
This isn't a commentary on the specifics of how it was done, merely on whether a withdrawal should have been done.
Terrorism in Afghanistan has zero to do with the US constituency.
A "foothold" is useless and unnecessary.
I feel badly for the Afghan people, but ultimately it isn't the US' problem, and never has been. If they'd like to have a civil war and get those assholes out, let them.
What terrorist acts have the Taliban committed? I've mostly only seen them fight back against foreign invaders.
> and harbor terrorists once again in the future (remember the same Taliban sheltered 9/11 terrorists and is still allied with al Qaeda!).
First they offered to look at evidence and consider extradition, then they offered extradition, both of which the U.S. refused.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1539468.stm
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
> It means we lose a foothold in the region, militarily and economically.
Why does the U.S. need a foothold in a region on the other side of the world?
Giving aid to a terrorist group that commits those acts doesn't make the Taliban less complicit. See this UN report from June about how the Taliban is still closely tied to al Qaeda (https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/02/middleeast/un-report-tali...). As for what atrocities they've committed, there's a long list on Wikipedia, many of which meet the definition of terrorism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Condemned_practices).
> Why does the U.S. need a foothold in a region on the other side of the world?
So many reasons. First, to contain China, which is the principal threat to America's prosperity and control in the future. Second, to support other democratic nations like India, who will suffer from the Taliban's resurgence. Third, to expand our economic interests. Fourth, to continue our mission to sustain human rights which the Taliban is already eroding. There are others, and I am certainly not a foreign policy expert, but my point is - there's something there.
But when the Saudis presumably financed some of the same/similar bad guys it wasn't even worth much of an investigation? I find such "they're bad guys!"-arguments to be applied very inconsistently
those are the terrorists the US created by mercilessly bombing their civilian relatives.
We should have at least kept a smaller force around as a presence to maintain continuity. See this “rescue plan for Afghanistan” from the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board for more suggestions that aren’t blindly exiting Afghanistan in a few short months: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-rescue-plan-for-afghanistan-t...