President Biden was more familiar with the Afghanistan question than any of his predecessors. His disdain for the conflict was well known and Washington should not have been surprised at his decision to leave. However, after twenty years, Joe Biden of all people should know how to make a graceful exit. It is not a secret that fighting is cyclical—come late fall the weather in Afghanistan switches from desert heat to frozen tundra—making movements for exposed ground forces, like the Taliban’s, extremely difficult.

But the Biden return to normalcy only normalized Trump. Just like Trump in Syria, Biden left Afghanistan without a plan.

As an Afghan, I am quick to admit the weakness and venality of the former-President Ashraf Ghani and his government. History will judge him and his cronies very harshly for their nefarious actions, abandoning and selling out the military and country in its most desperate days. But this morning as we watched the Taliban march into the presidential palace, many on the American right and left were smugly congratulating themselves on Twitter for predicting the collapse of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces. These anti-war leftists and libertarians taking their online victory laps cannot fathom what Afghans are going through. They have never lived in fear, been denied basic human rights or been forced into sexual slavery. They will never understand America’s successes.