As president, George W. Bush was proud of his brave victory in just about banishing the Taliban from Afghanistan. "…Thanks to our military, our allies, and the brave fighters of Afghanistan, the Taliban regime is coming to end."
He then passed the baton to President Barack Obama, who was proud of his efforts as well. "And we trained Afghan forces to take responsibility for their own security."
Former president Donald Trump, who thought he had invented the baton, predictably tooted his own horn on the matter. "The spirit is tremendous over there of your Afghan forces and of the American forces. We're training, and we're working with them. I'm hearing it from everybody. Everybody that goes over there comes back and says, 'Really, it's like a different place.'"
And President Joe Biden, now holding the baton, brings it home. "The likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely."
The group effort to invade and then abandon Afghanistan involved four very confident US presidents. In the process they wasted 20 years, sacrificed 2,352 American lives and at least 66,000 Afghan lives, and spent US$2,261,000,000,000 (more than $2 trillion), all so that we could, as one YouTube commenter succinctly put it, replace the Taliban with, er, the Taliban. The US really nailed it this time.
