Eli Lake, Columnist

Biden Is Making America’s Afghanistan Problems Worse

Instead of trying to improve on Trump’s peace deal, Biden should just start over.

March 21, 2021 at 5:00 PM EDT

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Aftermath of a bombing, Kabul, March 18, 2021.
Photographer: WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP

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When President Joe Biden took office, he inherited a foreign policy disaster in Afghanistan.

A year ago, his predecessor’s envoys negotiated an agreement with the Taliban that said the last U.S. troops would leave the country by May 1. That’s just six weeks away, and leaving then would mean the collapse of the elected government the U.S. helped create. And yet a decision to stay past May would put remaining U.S. forces at risk of renewed Taliban attacks.

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