The Atlantic

The Two Blows America Is Dealing to the Taliban

The exit from Afghanistan may seem like a failure. But it can also be seen as a display of power.
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Imagine how the scene at the Kabul airport looked to the suicide bomber in the last seconds before he committed his act of murder yesterday: thousands of men, women, and children queuing and jostling in desperate escape from the coming Taliban regime. These were not randomly selected men, women, and children either. These were people with technical skills: medicine, computers, electrical engineering. These were people who spoke foreign languages. These

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