“A Democratic foreign policy would empower experts to plan post-conflict reconstruction ahead of time; not on the fly; it would build a standing roster of international police to handle security after we topple a tyrant; it would create a system to rapidly stand up indigenous security forces.”

–Senator Joe Biden (Wall Street Journal, September 9, 2004)

I confess: Over the last two decades, I stopped following events in Afghanistan. Perhaps you did as well. If minutes of news coverage devoted to a story are any indication of its newsworthiness, Afghanistan had been relegated to the back burner.

So I never intended to write a blog about the country. That is, until I read Zaki Anwari’s story. More about Zaki later.

After the events of September 11, 2001, President Bush deployed troops to Afghanistan for two purposes: To find and eliminate Osama bin Laden, and to weaken or destroy al-Qaeda. Mission accomplished.

But we stayed. The mission morphed into an effort to nation-build Afghanistan. After twenty years and four U.S. presidents, we may be back to “square one,” minus the nefarious bin Laden.

Polls indicate President Biden had the support of Americans to withdraw from Afghanistan. But the way in which it was done? I don’t think so.

The national security team’s scheme to accomplish the withdrawal, and the debacle that has ensued, leave us scratching our heads. I mean, three Boy Scouts, armed with GPS watches and a day planner, could have put together a better evacuation plan.

From the quote above, we can deduce it’s easier to govern and lead from a Senate seat, when it doesn’t matter, as opposed to when you’re in the White House, and it does.

Full withdrawal versus leaving some troops and a functioning military air base is a discussion for the experts–not just politicians but military, too. It’s a geopolitical issue that will be intensely scrutinized and debated for years to come. Suffice it to say that, in an attempt to burnish his image, Mr. Biden has tarnished his presidency, at the very least.

But there’s a human face we can put on the cost of nation-building in Afghanistan, and that’s where Zaki Anwari’s story comes in.

Zaki was a 17-year-old student athlete–a midfielder for the Afghan national youth soccer team. His life was all about soccer, meaning he could have been any teenage American who lives to play a sport.

He was born 2 years after the Taliban was driven out of Afghanistan by U.S. forces. All he knew of their terror was from the stories his parents and other adults told him…until the Taliban returned.

Zaki was a good student at an excellent school. He captained the school’s soccer team, idolized Lionel Messi, and followed professional soccer. He had the good fortune of living in a more modern, progressive, and safer Afghanistan, courtesy of the U.S. and our allies.

But, as the U.S. reduced its military presence there, and the Taliban began to re-take control of the country, province by province, he knew his fate. His dream of a life in soccer would end–unless he could escape the country.

That is what took him to the Karzai International Airport, and led him to desperately grab the landing gear of a U.S. C-17 cargo plane as it rolled down the runway. Wise? No. Desperation? Yes…and desperate people do desperate things. No longer able to trust the Americans, he told his brother, “This is a chance to trust in God.”

Once airborne, he held on for as long as possible, and then plunged to his death along with another Afghan citizen. If you haven’t seen the video, consider yourself lucky. The still photo of Zaki mid-air is bad enough.

But it is that photo we should never forget. Nor the faces of Afghan girls who’ve lived as humans, not treated as property, though bondage may be their destiny now. And the Afghans who served our military so well, often as interpreters if not co-warriors. They cast their lot with the Americans, and now many of them have been left behind.

To go into a foreign country and attempt to change it, do the job halfway, and then leave, allowing it to revert back to its former self, is patently wrong. It’s a tremendous moral injustice to the generation of that country’s citizens, born into a better world, to desert them and leave them in the hands of barbarians.

I never wore the uniform, and I’m no expert in anything military. But common sense would suggest that, should we go into a foreign country again, we define the mission, go in with a specific goal and a detailed plan, and we actually let our military men and women do the job they’re trained to do.

Don’t we owe that, at the very least, to a teenage kid, whose dreams of a brighter future and his very life were both dashed when we bungled an attempt at nation-building?