April 16, 2021
Let’s start by saying it could be worse: This isn’t a cartoon but a classic illustration by Elizabeth Butler of
The march to Jalalabad began with 4,000 soldiers and 12,000 civilian supporters, but was reduced to badly wounded ass’t surgeon William Brydon, alone on a pony that died of its own wounds shortly after arrival.
Granted, the British returned to level Kabul, put their chosen leader back in power and maintain him for about another decade, but there’s a reason Afghanistan is called “The Graveyard of Empires.”
Drew Sheneman (AMS) asks how we can exit gracefully, and the answer is simple: If there were a graceful way out, we’d have taken it long ago.