It was just a question of when the Taliban would seize power.
The optics have been horrible having to leave Afghanistan with the Taliban as the gatekeepers, but whatever leverage we could muster, it seemed to work far better than I expected. The United States + a shitload of other nations, found a way to convince the Taliban to play nice in the sandbox.
Will it continue? Money is the driver. The US military industrial complex funded Afghanistan for 20 years. God knows where our taxpayer dollars went?
Now the Taliban have to figure out how to fund Afghanistan. Being Stone Age “savages” won’t feed the nation. They are fucked if cut off from the world.
Afghanistan will have to figure out their own future. Probably a good thing. My bet is that the Afghan women are going to surprise us with their pushback.