Editorial: Afghanistan failures point to foreign policy lessons we have yet to take to heart

Politicians and historians will debate for years the particulars of America's experience in Afghanistan and the depressing optics of our final days and hours in that unfortunate country. Today, we must focus our attention on using the past to guide decisions for the future, not just in Afghanistan or the broader Middle East but at foreign points around the globe.

We cannot ignore, for instance, certain general conclusions about interjecting American forces into foreign countries that have been obvious since at least Vietnam and played out before us in Afghanistan:

• There is no long-term percentage in propping up governments lacking firm institutional foundations or overwhelming popular support;

• We should be wary of sending forces to war in a foreign country without a clear, measurable definition of what our purpose is and what achieving victory will look like;

• We should not kid ourselves about the abilities or interests of foreign governments seeking our temporary help to maintain permanent control of their countries;

• And we should be realistic about the challenges of exporting democracy or building government institutions without asking under what circumstances it is viable and what commitment will be required to make it so.

In the emotional aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, most Americans were fine with the idea of bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, breaking up al-Qaida and eliminating the capacity of enemies to export terrorism to our own shores. But from the moment we turned our attention to Iraq and then back to Afghanistan, one would have a hard time defining what we hoped to accomplish there. Indeed, throughout most of the Obama administration and the Trump administration, our real goal seemed simply to avoid the inevitable result that we are witnessing now.

Our bitter failure to extricate ourselves seamlessly from Afghanistan is playing out on television and social media screens in heartbreaking detail, and surely some of the blame for that must fall on the leaders and authorities who somehow trusted that there was enough will and training in Afghanistan to hold off the Taliban, or at least to prove strong enough to force some form of power sharing. But we can't fault the decision to get us out, which, in addition to serving as an acknowledgment of the realities in Afghanistan, also enables us to train our attention and resources on more direct foreign-relations threats from North Korea, Russia and China.

Now, as President Joe Biden alluded in his address to the nation Monday, our immediate focus must be on getting our troops and diplomats out safely and then bringing to bear what influence we can to protect human rights, and especially the rights of women and girls, as the Taliban take control.

And, then, we must strive to understand lessons that have seemed so hard in the past for us to take to heart.

We can and do hold out some hope that in our two decades of association with Afghanistan, we have planted some seeds of democracy and human advancement that may serve the nation. But we must be realistic that the prospects are slim for those seeds to sprout immediately or to last for long without our own direct and constant involvement, a prospect that in the new order of the Middle East implies a need for more nuanced and thoughtful diplomacy than ever before.