Advice from a neocon think-tanker:

I’d like to share the same advice I sent our incredible ISW team.

We’re all likely to ignore the symptoms and charge ahead. We shouldn’t.

These recommendations are a start. They build on policies that limit the sharing of graphic imagery, which I recommend you do as well. pic.twitter.com/X3UKonmq9s

— Jennifer Cafarella (@JennyCafarella) August 12, 2021

Patrick Deneen says:

We spent twenty years and at least a trillion dollars trying to prevent what is happening today — and what began to happen the moment the US began withdrawing the soldiers holding up the façades of the Potemkin village. This story in the NYT makes your heart break for Afghan soldiers. Those in this story were trying to fight, but their inept commanders and the civilian leadership failed them. All the money and force of the world’s No. 1 superpower couldn’t make these people willing and capable of fighting the Islamist berserker hill people.

Pat Buchanan comments:

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has summarized the situation:

“The complete, utter failure of the Afghan national army, absent our hand-holding, to defend their country is a blistering indictment of a failed 20-year strategy predicated on the belief that billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars could create an effective democratic central government in a nation that has never had one.”

More:

The questions that need answering:

Was not the attempt to transplant Madisonian democracy into the soil of the Middle and Near East a fool’s errand from the beginning?

How many other U.S. allies field paper armies, which will collapse, if they do not have the Americans there to do the heavy lifting?

Is what we have on offer — one man-one vote democracy — truly appealing in a part of the world where democracy seems to have trouble, from the Maghreb to the Middle East to Central Asia, putting down any deep roots?

The Taliban’s God is Allah. The golden calf we had on offer was democracy. In the Hindu Kush, their god has proven stronger.

One of life’s unsolvable mysteries: how Allah’s hillbillies beat a modern military fighting for democracy and wokeness:

UPDATE: Australian analyst Gray Connally is a good person to follow on Twitter: