In the summer of 2019, during her first campaign for president, then-senator Kamala Harris claimed that, if elected, she could withdraw all remaining US troops from Afghanistan without jeopardizing the people left behind.
"I want to ensure that the country is on a path to stability, that we protect the gains that have been made for Afghan women and others, and that it never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists," Harris told the Council on Foreign Relations.
In the event, of course, it was President Biden who ordered the US departure from Afghanistan. That departure in 2021 was rushed, ill-planned, and chaotic — a bloody shambles that undid at a stroke almost everything the United States had done to improve the lives and prospects of Afghanistan's people. The "gains that [had] been made for Afghan women and others" were not protected. The country did once again become "a safe haven for terrorists."
The Afghanistan debacle was, hands down, the worst foreign policy failure of the Biden presidency. In the immediate wake of that disaster, the administration's approval rating went underwater, a position from which it has never recovered. Yet Biden has steadfastly insisted that he makes "no apologies" for the Afghanistan fiasco and that he "was right" to handle it the way he did.
Harris agrees. Rather than distance herself from that ignominious catastrophe, she has doubled down in backing it. Last month, on the third anniversary of the suicide bombing that killed 13 US service members at the Kabul airport, she praised Biden for making what she called "the courageous and right decision" to abandon Afghanistan. She boasts that she played a key role in that decision, and has described herself as "the last person in the room" when Biden determined to pull American forces out.
 In Afghanistan, it is illegal for women to speak in public, to sing or read aloud, to look at men they are not related to, or to allow any part of their bodies, including their hands, to be seen in public. |
The reimposition of the Taliban's theocratic dictatorship made possible by that pullout has been unbelievably nightmarish for Afghanistan's girls and women. With the return of the Islamists to power, 20 years of progress and rising equality were erased, replaced, in the UN's words, with "a system founded on the mass oppression of women."
In short order, half of Afghanistan's population was once again being repressed in myriad ways that had stopped as long as US boots were on the ground. Schooling for girls ended at sixth grade and higher education was out of the question. Women were barred from gyms, from jobs with non-governmental organizations, from national parks, from boarding planes without a male escort — and from showing their faces.
The Taliban's human rights horrors are not a secret, yet they are consistently downplayed or overlooked. At times, liberal media outlets have acted with hopeless naiveté, treating the Taliban with an indulgence they would never extend to a civilized government.
In 2020, The New York Times published an essay by Sirajuddin Haqqani, a leading Taliban militant, headlined "What We, the Taliban, Want." The column was a collection of lies, which was only to be expected from the spokesman of a violent theocratic insurgency. Haqqani declared that the Taliban's goal was an "inclusive political system in which the voice of every Afghan is reflected and where no Afghan feels excluded." He vowed that "the new Afghanistan will be a responsible member of the international community," in which "everybody would have the right to live with dignity, in peace."
Most egregious of all was this passage:
"I am confident that, liberated from foreign domination and interference, we together will find a way to build an Islamic system in which all Afghans have equal rights, where the rights of women that are granted by Islam — from the right to education to the right to work — are protected, and where merit is the basis for equal opportunity."
What he and his fellow fanatics actually built was a hellscape in which women are treated like lepers or untouchables — third-class citizens with no right to live normal lives or pursue normal goals. Since 2021, their predicament has been hideous. Now it is even worse.
A new law promulgated last month makes it a crime for Afghan women to speak in public, to sing or read aloud, to look at men they are not married or related to, to allow any part of their bodies, including hands and feet, to be seen in public, or to travel alone.
"On the streets of Kabul there is no color now," an Afghan journalist wrote last week in the Sunday Times of London under a pseudonym. "The Taliban have decreed we must all wear black and be totally veiled . . . and 'clothing should not be thin, tight, or short.' Even the quince trees seem gray this summer."
When the Americans fled and the Taliban returned three years ago, she recounts, her life was turned upside down.
"I had been studying at university and working in my dream job in media. I used to go out and see my friends and life was full of possibilities. Overnight, I lost my studies, my job, and my dreams and when all the money I had saved ran out, I couldn't afford the rent on the house. . . . Now, in my mid-twenties, I have no hope left and feel that nothing will ever change. All I am doing is just trying to find some food to feed my mother. It's not a life. No woman here has a life. It's just survival."
It mystifies me that Harris, who has reversed so many of her former positions, continues to defend the US pullout from Afghanistan rather than conceding that it was a grievous mistake. How is it that our first female vice president has nothing to say about the treatment of female Afghans? How is it that her political party — which regularly accuses Donald Trump and the Republican Party of waging a "war on women" because they don't support an unrestricted right to abortion — never mentions the cruel abuse of girls and women in Afghanistan? How can progressives who deploy "Handmaid's Tale" allusions when JD Vance sneers at "childless cat ladies" stay silent in the face of a real-world dystopia more evil than anything Margaret Atwood imagined?
When nonwhite South Africans were suffering under racial apartheid, liberal voices across the United States kept up a mighty roar of protest. On college campuses and in Congress, the call for justice was powerful. As vice president in the 1970s, Walter Mondale was outspoken in his condemnation of apartheid. Why is there no similar outcry from the left about the gender apartheid in Afghanistan today? And why is it not being led by the highest-ranking woman in American political history?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He told them so
History is full of memorable "I-told-you-sos."
In the biblical book of Jonah, the prophet rails at God for forgiving the repentant people of Nineveh: "Lord, was this not what I said when I was still in my own country?"
In 1938, Winston Churchill scathingly foretold the outcome of Neville Chamberlain's infamous Munich agreement with Adolf Hitler: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."
When biologist Paul Ehrlich claimed that the earth's resources were being used up because of overpopulation, economist Julian Simon offered a wager: Let Ehrlich name any five commodities and Simon predicted that in 10 years they would be more abundant, not less. Simon won the bet and Ehrlich paid up.
Six months ago, Special Counsel Robert Hur was vehemently criticized when he referred to President Biden as a "well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory." Then came the June 27 Biden-Trump debate and the critics knew that Hur had told them so.
 Lord Sainsbury hid a note expressing his displeasure with an architectural decision, confident he would be proved right in the end. |
The urge to get credit for having been proven right is pretty close to universal. Books have been written on the theme by liberals and conservatives alike. But rare indeed is the individual who is so confident of being vindicated that he expresses his view in a self-satisfied message to be discovered after his death.
Which is why I nominate Lord John Sainsbury, who died in 2022, for penning the most stylish I-told-you-so of all time.
A billionaire supermarket magnate and art lover, Sainsbury pledged in 1985 to underwrite the construction of a new wing for London's National Gallery. Not only did he supply tens of millions of dollars, he also donated priceless paintings to the museum, including works by Degas, Gauguin, Monet, and Rousseau.
But Sainsbury didn't like the design of the new wing. One feature in particular displeased him: two ornamental columns planned for the building's lobby. The columns served no structural purpose, and Sainsbury thought they were a mistake. He probably could have insisted that they be scrapped — he was picking up most of the tab, after all — but he decided to hold his peace. "I felt that, on balance, we should let the architect be the architect," he said.
So instead, he typed up a note expressing his objections, sealed it in a plastic folder, and had the folder inserted into one of the columns.
That was in 1990.
Now, nearly 35 years later, the Sainsbury wing is being renovated. Last winter, the two false columns were demolished and Sainsbury's letter, addressed "To Those Who Find This Note," was discovered.
"IF YOU HAVE FOUND THIS NOTE YOU MUST BE ENGAGED IN DEMOLISHING ONE OF THE FALSE COLUMNS THAT HAVE BEEN PLACED IN THE FOYER OF THE SAINSBURY WING OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY," he wrote in all caps on a sheet of Sainsbury's stationery. "I BELIEVE THAT THE FALSE COLUMNS ARE A MISTAKE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THAT WE WOULD LIVE TO REGRET OUR ACCEPTING THIS DETAIL OF HIS DESIGN.
"LET IT BE KNOWN THAT ONE OF THE DONORS OF THIS BUILDING IS ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTED THAT YOUR GENERATION HAS DECIDED TO DISPENSE WITH THE UNNECESSARY COLUMNS."
Was there ever a more elegant I-told-you-so?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
What I Wrote Then
25 years ago on the op-ed page
From "Who's afraid of the Southern Baptists?," Sept. 13, 1999:
It is a widely held article of Christian faith that no one can be spiritually saved except through Jesus, and that Christians are bound to spread this good news — the literal translation of "gospel" — to those who haven't accepted it. Judaism teaches differently. No intermediary can deliver God's grace and forgiveness, Jews believe; one must earn His favor directly, through prayer, repentance, and charity.
As a Jew, I cannot share the Baptists' belief in Jesus. But I can certainly acknowledge that by their lights they are offering the Jewish people something incalculably precious: eternal salvation. My religion does not require me to go out and proselytize (indeed it discourages it). But I have no trouble respecting the dedication of a Southern Baptist whose religion does require it of him.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Last Line
"I remember with devout thankfulness that I can never be much nearer parting company with my readers forever, than I was then, until there shall be written against my life, the two words with which I have this day closed this book: THE END." — Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (1865)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
-- ## --
Follow Jeff Jacoby on X (aka Twitter).
Discuss his columns on Facebook.
Want to read more? Sign up for "Arguable," Jeff Jacoby's free weekly email newsletter.