On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Tom Rogan, a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss why the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was so painful and how two decades of failure can inform a plan to move forward.

“I would say that the fundamental failure is this misalignment of objectives, instead of trying to impose a cost on the Taliban for facilitating al Qaeda and 9/11, USS Cole, etc. Driving them from power, I think was the right move … we should have essentially said the costs of being able to try and pacify those [areas] and bring them under government control in a formal sense at least were too high. That was that objective was, was not credible in terms of the costs that it would take and the casualties we have seen,” Rogan said.

Rogan said the decision to abandon Afghanistan leaves a weakness for terrorists such as the Taliban to take advantage of.

“The Taliban do not have a plurality of the demographics on their side in terms of their ideology as counterposed against other ideologies, but they have coercive power and, you know, that’s powerful,” Rogan said.

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