To attempt to draw all the threads of a twenty year conflict in Afghanistan together and come to a meaningful conclusion in a half page editorial is ambitious and probably foolhardy. The long term analysis must be left to the historians. The motives for the war were generally valid but our understanding of the history of Afghanistan and the consequences of staying there were naive at best. The 9/11 attack, which instigated it, was perpetrated largely by Islamic fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia not Afghanistan or Iraq. Pakistan has its finger in the pie and has suffered few consequences. We are now reaping the harvest of four presidents trying to make the right decisions and not seeing the broader picture or getting the right advice. Our four year electoral system, with its massive turnover of expertise and where every decision in micro-analyzed for its partisan nature, does not make for good long term decision making. It's safer for each President to off-load difficult ones onto the next incumbent.

As with Vietnam, we measured an army's effectiveness by its numbers and equipment. We did the same with Chiang Kai-shek in China in 1946 and with South Vietnam. We ignored the basics - that to be willing to lay down your life for a cause, you must have motive. We made mistakes. We created Bin Laden by supporting him and his followers to fight the Russians. We trained the Mujahideen to use hand held SAM missiles, our latest technology, to down Russian helicopters and to tilt the balance of the war. The different factions of the Taliban now have a glittering arsenal of American-made weaponry to help them establish their power. I am sure some of the weapons will make their way to Russia, Iran and Pakistan for analysis. Ironically, some Taliban fighters dressed in stolen American combat gear as they entered the cities. Did they want to look like Americans?

When it comes to killing, which is the purpose of war, the young army recruits are the ones who usually die first, then the civilians unable to get out of the way and then those who supported the previous regime. This is a characteristic of all wars. The poor will take the brunt of the horror. The Taliban carefully tested the soldiers in the Afghan army, giving them a choice in their own language that they could understand. Surrender or die. Most of the leaders, once their their orders were disobeyed, escaped. Ironically a protracted conflict might have killed many more.

What was positive about our occupation of the country was that we gave the urban Afghans a sniff of freedom, of what a constitutional democracy feels like, where people are free to make their own choices, particularly women. One of the mistakes we made was to try to make a relatively poor Muslim country, made up of many different ethnic groupings, into an image of ourselves. It was never going to work whatever we did. We were always at some level the intruders. Now we worry that other countries will move in. Both Russia and China have problems with their ethnic and religious minorities along the entire Silk Road. Russia has cut Muslim Chechnyas down mercilessly. China has imprisoned and is attempting to re-educate the Uyghurs. Afghans dislike the Iranians in the same way the Vietnamese dislike the Chinese. And there are religious and political tensions beneath the surface in the country itself. All Afghans, like all Americans, do not think alike. Pakistan, while trying to keep its feet in every camp, plays the innocent and just keeps asking for money for its army. Where's Bin laden? "We don't know." "Oops. Just down the road? More American dollars please. We have to fight the terrorists."

Afghanistan will need both Western cash and expertise to continue their development and to prevent being gobbled up by their neighbors. Their children will continue to want Western education and to speak English. They have cell phones. The genie is out of the bottle. Two highly intelligent Afghan young men I taught a few years back, both from poor backgrounds, went on to NYU. I pray every night that they and their families are safe. President Trump started the withdrawal rolling, naively believing you could somehow trust and sign a treaty with the Taliban.

A twenty year war is now coming to an end. We are no longer the policeman of central Asia. This is good in my view. We are still the richest and most powerful country in the world. In Vietnam we finally realized our mistake and got out. It was messy. We then helped the country get back on its feet and thanks to men like John McCain shook hands with the old enemy. This is as it should be. There are political and social forces at work in Afghanistan which, I believe, can unite the country. The Taliban are only one constituent. As the Japanese proverb goes, "We learn little from victory, much from defeat."

Over the last twenty years we may have ignored the problems created by the occupation of Afghanistan but American soldiers died there and a great deal of our money was spent. We must not abandon the ordinary people of Afghanistan. They have a hard struggle ahead of them. Having withdrawn, we must now turn our attention and our resources now to the much more urgent problems of climate change, the pandemic and poverty in this country. We need to be the first of the developed nations to convert to a post -industrial society where carbon neutrality, protecting our environment and water supplies while mitigating the extremes of climate change are our priorities. The entire world will be trying desperately to cope with these extremes during the next ten years. Our future stability as a country depends on doing so and showing the world how to do it. These challenges will affect all countries, regardless of language, race, ethnicity or political persuasion.