Death toll in Afghanistan school bombing rises to 85, most of them girls. Taliban believes that girls should receive no education beyond bare essentials. The scene in “American Sniper” is all too realistic. There a woman is murdered by a fanatic because her daughter understands simple arithmetic. Now a real girl’s school is bombed.

Such attacks on schoolgirls were common until US troops took control. Now that we are leaving, the attacks resume. No, we can’t cure all the ills of the world. No, we can’t police the whole planet. And yes, 20 years is a long time. But US troops have been in Germany since 1945 and in South Korea since 1950. As a result, Soviet troops did not invade Western Europe, and North Korean troops did not invade the South.

So how long should we keep a small contingent of troops in Afghanistan? How long should we be sure that the base and airfield at Bagram is secure, so we can reinforce Afghanistan if required? How long should we keep enough troops there to assure that our friends there will not be massacred, as they were in South Vietnam? How long should we persist, in order to tell the world that it is safer to be our friend than our enemy, rather than the reverse?

“As long as it takes” is difficult to say, much less to implement. But that’s what I believe is true.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/09/asia/afghanistan-girls-school-attack-intl-hnk/index.html

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