If a Taliban victory was inevitable, this is yeah totally true. The “rip off the bandaid” approach.

The question of how long it takes to peacefully handover power in a colony is an interesting one. It can be an absurd amount of time, may never be 100%, or it may never be peaceful, if resentment persists. I think it is possible, but we may differ there.

It’s certainly hard to justify the long-term cost to American life, expenditure, energy and focus to attempt beneficial cultural change on the other side of the world.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, some things are actually better in Afghanistan, since 2021. Definite evidence that war is in fact, worse, generally, than even a very dickish government. Looking at the data, I might come down on your side, it’s tough.

WHO Health data overview for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

I think we can all agree destruction of the environment is bad. Has it or the incentives gotten any better since, or was it optimistic?

They don’t even have to sell it, company valuation increases alone are evidence of piracy

The trouble is, if all the considerate people who don’t want kids don’t have kids, the only people left will be the kids of the kids that did want kids.

Probably being an absolutist instead of considering case-by-case leaves room for criticism.

In your example, Biden pulling out of Afghanistan. Was it wrong to intervene in the first place, probably? But pulling out at that point caused the deaths of western allies and handed victory to the Taliban, causing millions to suffer eg. women can’t get jobs and single-mother families starve to death… and it was entirely foreseeable.

I would argue that Humanitarian Intervention should be excluded, and certain UN-led actions (although the bureaucracy has certainly led to interventions occurring after mass deaths, unfortunately).