Afghan sunset

It's been awhile since I've had such conflicted opinions, but the situation in Afghanistan is bewildering, to say the least.

On the one hand, I'm delighted to see us withdraw our military from the region. The United States has invested – and lost – $85 billion over the past 20 years trying to train and equip the Afghan army to defend itself against the oppressive Taliban regime. And what was the return? At least 2,500 lost American lives and an Afghan army that couldn't defend itself or its country.

Sounds a whole lot like Vietnam, doesn't it? Why didn't we learn from that experience? Or even the Russian adventure in Afghanistan in the 1980s, which also proved to be equally fruitless for them. Why wasn't that a clue for us?

And while I'm pleased to see us leaving the region, I can't help but feel appalled and let down by an apparently ill-conceived evacuation process that has left tens of thousands of Afghani allies in peril. How in the hell did it come to this? Wasn't there a better way?

This is all very complicated and nothing is in black or white. I'm not in the military, nor do I sit in meetings with the Joint Chiefs or with White House advisors. There are strategies and considerations that I'll never know about, much less understand.

All that I have are the images I see in the media.

The original mission in Afghanistan was to disrupt Isis and the Taliban from using the region as a training ground for terrorism in the wake of 9/11. And the mission was working, sending the Taliban into full flight. But somewhere along the way, the mission somehow shifted from terror busting to nation building, and that's where the quagmire develops. Our withdrawal is coming 19 years too late, it seems to me.

Because a whole generation of Afghans – and particularly women – were given a measure of Western-style freedom from Sharia law, our withdrawal seems particularly heartless as the Taliban returns with its raging male-centric brutality.

And, yet, it was way past time to leave. Recent polling shows that 65 percent of Americans approve of the withdrawal, if not its execution. Will the subsequent absence of American security mean that the Taliban will use Afghanistan as Terrorism Central once more? Probably. But I suspect ever-evolving American technology, featuring drone and air strikes, could hinder and disrupt future terrorist plans.

As it is, we have enough on our plate with our own home-grown terrorists trying to dismantle our democracy.

It all leaves me confused and conflicted. Depending on the time of day, I can give you a different answer to the same question. That's where I am on Afghanistan.