“To understand President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan against the advice of the US military establishment, you need to go back to a debate that played out more than a decade ago, during the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency,” Vox reports.

“In 2009, the new Obama administration debated whether to ‘surge’ troop levels in Afghanistan after nearly eight years of war had failed to quell the insurgency from the overthrown Taliban forces. Top generals asked early that year for 17,000 more US troops and then, having gotten those, asked for an additional 40,000 to try to weaken the Taliban and strengthen the Afghan government.”

“Then-Vice President Biden was consistently one of the biggest skeptics of the military’s recommendations. Throughout months of debate, he repeatedly raised the inconvenient point that the generals’ preferred strategy seemed extremely unlikely to lead to actual victory.”

“In Britain, the chaotic departure from Afghanistan has drawn comparisons not to helicopters flying out of Saigon but to an earlier debacle: the 1956 Suez crisis, in which a humiliated Britain was forced to pull out of Egypt, having failed to dislodge its nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser,” the New York Times reports.

“The problem is, Britain had very little to say about the timing or tactics of the most recent withdrawal, even though it suffered the second-most casualties in the Afghanistan war after the United States. That has left British officials embarrassed and embittered at President Biden. Some say he behaved more like his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, than an ally who promised a new era of American partnership.”

Wall Street Journal: “In 2001, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban, tried to arrange the group’s surrender to the new U.S.-backed Afghan government. It was rejected. He spent most of the past decade under arrest in Pakistan.”

“He returns to power 20 years later after the U.S. lobbied for his release when the Trump administration launched talks with the Taliban. At the helm of the group’s political office in Doha, its de facto embassy, Mullah Baradar led talks with the U.S. that culminated in a deal to end America’s engagement in the 20-year war.”

“The world still has little idea who Afghanistan’s new leaders are and how they will rule the country. If the movement has a face, today it is Mullah Baradar. He is the highest-ranking leader of the movement to appear in public since it took back control of Afghanistan.”

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled his country as its capital Kabul was being overtaken by Taliban fighters, is now in the United Arab Emirates, CNBC reports.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports the Afghan ambassador in Tajikistan says Ghani escaped with bags full of $169 million dollars.