President Biden.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

President Biden faced an unenviable task when speaking to the American people about the end of the Afghanistan war: taking a victory lap over what looks more like a defeat even to many war-weary voters.

The airlift was a major undertaking and most Americans wanted to close the book on the nearly 20-year-old war, which had long since crept beyond the original retributive mission in the aftermath of 9/11. Biden deserves credit for doing what his predecessors did not do, either because they believed nation-building would succeed (in the case of George W. Bush) or because they feared the images that ultimately unfolded on Kabul (as could be said of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, or at least their pivotal advisers).

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.