Pat Buchanan was right about Afghanistan

Pat Buchanan, paleoconservative and three-time Republican Party leadership hopeful, hasn’t yet faded into obscurity. Last week, the Conservative blogger Rod Dreher stirred up controversy on Twitter after posting a tweet stating ‘He told us so’. Why was Buchanan, long since marginalised from mainstream conservative spaces, back in favour? The answer is simple: the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.

By mid-July 2002, nearly two decades prior to the humiliating US exit, Pat Buchanan had already seen the writing on the wall in Afghanistan.

“Clearly the days of easy victories are over,” Buchanan wrote. U.S. forces were destroying Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters at Tora Bora through Operation Anaconda, yet it was obvious that America’s mission in the region was about to change. The war that President Bush sold to the American people would not be the one they’d be fighting for much longer.

Read the full opinion at Unherd