And now the pendulum swings the other way.
You know when Trump campaigned on this, it was "no foreign wars forever". "Let them defend their own country". There wasn't alot of talk about us getting something out of it as well (suppression of AQ). Just that it was a cost that needn't be born anymore and we didn't give a crap if their country collapsed. Now we're worried about AQ again, imagine that.
Pompeo is blowing alot of smoke about, well, we had a deal on paper with the Taliban that says if we leave the country by May 1, they'll forsake AQ forever and ever amen. And if they don't, we'll crush them. Well, once you hand over the country on May 1, there's not a lot of crushing to be done unless Trump was championing Afghanistan Invasion/Occupation II which he assuredly was not.
"Afghanistan, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie said Al Qaeda is still a principal focus of the U.S. military in the region."
"What we're here for is to prevent Al Qaeda and ISIS from being able to reconstitute in the ungoverned spaces, generally of eastern Afghanistan, and be able to plot attacks against our homeland," McKenzie said in the capital, Kabul. "That threat is still here today."
You know that country we were going to tell them to defend for themselves on May 1, that is an ungoverned space. So is the one Biden left them.