No member of the Republican Party has less right to complain about the withdrawal from Afghanistan than Donald Trump; after all, he was the one who negotiated the withdrawal agreement with which Biden ultimately chose to comply. Nevertheless, he is making it a campaign issue and insisting that Harris bears a share of the blame. Is that reasonable?
No. The record makes it quite clear that the withdrawal was Biden’s project more or less alone. For better or worse, he believed passionately that it was time to get out, because there was no reason to think that conditions in Afghanistan would ever improve. He did it knowing that the outcome could be messy, which it obviously was.
That said, has the parade of horribles that we were told would occur after the botched withdrawal come to pass? I would say no, just as it didn’t after Vietnam. American economic and military power are objective facts that cannot be wished away by our country’s critics and enemies even after we make mistakes.