The Week the Left Stopped Caring About Human Rights

Back in April, magazine told readers that the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan would be “.” The essay, by a scholar named Phyllis Bennis, sounded upbeat, even salubrious. It was the liberal case in full: We Americans were a wretched people to have gone there and a depraved people to have stayed for two decades. Some collateral damage upon our retreat was to be expected. We had spent too much time, she suggests, celebrating “the important but tiny gains in human rights won by the small sliver of women living in the cities, while the 75 percent of Afghan women who live in isolated villages and in the world.”