Dear Dr. Democrat,

I know that our team — the Democratic Party — is famous for unforced errors, but oh man. I’ve been against us leaving Afghanistan from the moment Biden announced he was following through on Trump’s deal to do so. Nothing, and I repeat, NOTHING has changed my mind on that, and as the withdrawal has progressed, I just wish we could turn back the clock and not do it. But we can’t, and here we are. I see only bad things ahead for the Biden administration at this point. The time to get the stuff done that we beat Trump in order to do is running quickly out. I don’t think we’ll prevail at the midterms, so it’s now or never and “now” evaporated today with ISIS attack on the Kabul airport. Please, Dr. Democrat, convince me I’m wrong.

Troubled in Toledo

Dear Troubled:

On a societal level, it’s tragic. But I’m having a hard time understanding how 75,000 Talibanis are able to hold a nation of 38 million hostage. There are about 40 million people in California. Could 75,000 MAGATs shut us down, take over our government, force women to wear burkhas and the rest?

It seems like there ought to be enough unhappy Afghanis to put up a fight. I’ve seen headlines of citing some resistance fighting in the northern provinces, but it seems sporadic and unorganized. It’s about what we should expect from a country that’s really a collection of disparate tribes, militias and mullahs running their own little fiefdoms.

On a political level, it’s way too early to tell what the fallout will be. It looks bad now, with polling typical of results when disasters are ongoing. But pulling out was polling at 75% before we did it, so there’s a bed of support out there. Also, Republicans have already burned their fingers trying to pin all the blame on Biden. There’s a lot of evidence that the groundwork for the disaster was laid by the previous administration.

And there certainly shouldn’t be any piling on by the non-Trump Republicans, who are mostly pro-Cheney/Bush types. They need to SFTU.

Dr. D.