To sum up, Biden perseveres in the illusion that the Taliban crave international “legitimacy,” and that they will need it to “maintain” that country. I have no doubt that the president is fearful of offending the Taliban, which is in a position to take American hostages (if they have not already done so). That would make the ongoing debacle an even worse crisis. Indeed, the Taliban haughtily announced on Monday that Biden’s promise of an August 31 final departure of U.S. forces is a “red line” for them, warning that there will be a “reaction” if Biden tries to extend the deadline (as British prime minister Boris Johnson is reportedly urging him to do). It will be interesting to see what “reaction” there is from a president of the United States to a blunt threat from jihadists.

All that said, I do not believe Biden bumbled into this disaster.

The president has been resolved for years to allow the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. He hoped that, when the inevitable happened, the Taliban would crave international legitimacy — the transnational-progressive gold standard — and thus that they would behave (relatively speaking) upon seizing control. In the interim, when it was in his power to do so, Biden undertook to win the Taliban over with shocking concessions and accommodations, including sabotaging the Afghan government and security forces, which eased the Taliban’s path to Kabul — in the end, they barely had to fire a shot in taking over.