Sitting on a shelf in my sunlit study are two massive works of history by the late, great scholar Zara Steiner, each dealing with the international politics of the 1920s and ’30s. The first volume is The Lights That Failed; the second is The Triumph of the Dark.
In important aspects of foreign and national-security policy, the Biden administration is really the Trump administration but with civilized manners. In no respect is that more true than in the president’s announcement of a complete military withdrawal from Afghanistan by September 11 of this year, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that brought the United States to that country’s stark mountains, fruitful valleys, and dusty towns.