Some things not being said about Afghanistan (or at least not often enough.)
First, when the former guy struck a deal with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. forces by May (four months earlier than the date Biden announced the U.S. exit would be completed) time was already short to begin detailed planning to ensure that U.S. allies in Afghanistan could be safely evacuated. The Biden Administration did not receive any comprehensive plans from Trump's team. I doubt they received any plans at all. All Trump cared about was his reelection campaign, and then after he lost reelection, all he cared about was overturning the election results. The Commander in Chief was missing in action for all normal matters of National Security. There are reports that Trump's State Department kept the Biden Team completely in the dark about plans for Afghanistan during what was supposed to be the presidential transition period. The Trump plan for evacuating our Afghan allies from Afghanistan was no doubt as detailed as his plan to roll out, and distribute, Covid-19 vaccines for all Americans: essentially non-existent, and Biden's Administration found the filling cabinets empty when they arrived.
Not only was Trump "otherwise occupied" during his final months in office, but does anyone believe that he had any interest in facilitating Visa applications for tens of thousands of Muslim Afghan nationals, whether or not they aided U.S. forces? Look how he treated the Kurds. Look at the various renditions of a Muslim Ban he kept putting in place. Look at his stance regarding Syrian refugees, and on immigration in general. Trump was perfectly content to walk away from our allies in Afghanistan. No doubt he would say that the Taliban told him there would be no retaliation against those people, which of course he would accept on their word just like he "accepted" Putin's word that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.
Even if Trump begrudgingly acknowledged some U.S. responsibility toward our Afghan allies, the State Department had been completely hollowed out during his term in office and was severely understaffed. There were vacant positions everywhere that needed to be filled, the State Department could not keep up with normal demands on its time, let alone fast track anything new. Then the United States Senate, still under Republican control, dragged its feet in confirming Biden's Cabinet choices and key positions below that level. In almost all cases confirmation.hearings on those picks did not begin until Trump was out of office. So Biden had to wait to install his team, who had been insufficiently briefed (if at all) during the transition period, and then they had to repopulate agencies that in some cases had become ghost towns, while rooting out a highly partisan resistance Trump had sent in to occupy those Departments.
Second, for all practical purposes, it is true that: "No one thought Afghanistan would collapse as quickly as it did." It's true even if a few voices can be located who in fact believed that Kabul could be under the control of the Taliban weeks before the scheduled date for total U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Those opinions, if they existed, were clearly outliers. Yes there were a sizable number of analysts who thought that the Afghan government might rapidly collapse after the U.S. left, but "rapidly" was defined as several weeks or months after the American withdrawal was complete. No doubt many of our Afghan allies who now are so tragically at risk (those who had made it to or were already in Kabul) would have fled to the Kabul Airport at least a week before the Taliban rolled into town had they thought the collapse could happen that suddenly. They were caught off guard by the suddenness also, even if they knew the final handwriting was on the wall, and being native to Afghanistan, they were better able to read that handwriting better than most American officials.
Third, although Peace talks with the Taliban failed, they were not useless.There were substantiate discussions on a range of issues. In the course of them it forced senior Taliban officials to at least consider what changes to the way their prior regime ruled might be acceptable, if that would help them establish their rule without inciting further resistance to their new regime. Those who engaged in those discussions opened up channels for communication that previously, in most cases, did not exist. No doubt some of those channels in some cases resulted in secret agreements whereby non-Taliban local Afghan leaders and security forces agreed on terms in advance rather than engage in further combat. If so, I seriously doubt they ran those agreements by the Afghan central government, or U.S. intelligence officers. We shall see of course, but the senior leadership of the Taliban is no longer as totally isolated from dialog with other elements of Afghan society, let alone the international community, as it had once been. That could be at least somewhat meaningful, perhaps especially now. There are Taliban and U.S. negotiators who by now know each other. That might help to save some lives.
Finally, although the U.S. failed, in twenty years of effort, to solidify a functional democratic national government with integrity, much more progress was made laying the seeds for a multi-faceted civil society. The nation that the Taliban are now in control of is very different than the nation they once controlled twenty years ago. A significant percentage of the population has grown accustomed to a different set of assumptions about their place in society, even a theocratic one. than once were held. The Taliban now are swimming in those altered waters. No doubt they will want to damn and/or channel the new forces they confront toward their goals, but to a limited extent they may be motivated now to at least somewhat "go more with the flow" in order to successfully govern.
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