After four decades of civil war, something like Afghanistan’s collapse last year was likely, if not quite inevitable.

Americans were tired of a war that did not serve their interests. Afghans tired of war in which they were the primary casualties.

In late 2001 the US wrecked al-Qaeda and drove the Taliban from power. However, creating a liberal society and Western-style democracy in Central Asia was not achievable at a reasonable cost and in a reasonable time.

Washington failed to understand the terrible impact of its war on Afghans. Observed interpreter Baktash Ahadi: “U.S. forces turned villages into battlegrounds, pulverizing mud homes and destroying livelihoods. One could almost hear the Taliban laughing as any sympathy for the West evaporated in bursts of gunfire.” This made America, along with the corrupt, incompetent, and distant Kabul government, an enemy, and the Taliban, added Ahadi, “the lesser of two evils.”

US officials refused to admit the truth.

The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock detailed how “senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

All three successive administrations created a dependent Potemkin state that could not survive America’s withdrawal.

Staying, not leaving, was Washington’s mistake.