America’s Miscalculations, Afghanistan’s Collapse

The last few days in Afghanistan have been chaotic as the Taliban retake control of the country.

The debacle can be traced to a number of assumptions that guided the execution of the U.S. withdrawal from the country after two decades of war.

How could those assumptions have proved so wrong, so quickly?

Guest: David E. Sanger, a White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times.

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Background reading: 

An Afghan military that did not believe in itself and a U.S. effort that President Biden, and most Americans, no longer believed in brought an ignoble end to the United States’ longest war.A takeover of the whole of Afghanistan was all but absolute as the government collapsed and the U.S. rushed through a frenzied evacuation.

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