World News: Biden must stand firm on Afghan withdrawal

Friday, June 25

FILE - In this April 14, 2021, file photo, President Joe Biden speaks from the Treaty Room in the White House, about the withdrawal of the remainder of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Afghanistan squandered its 20-year opportunity

Good morning and congratulations on making it to Friday.

How is everybody doing this morning? USA TODAY Opinion is offering up a slate of great columns that should keep you busy. So, take your time and see if anything jumps out at you.

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US troop withdrawal is overdue

Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow at Defense Priorities and a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times, including twice to Afghanistan. He writes about the plan to get U.S. troops out of that Afghanistan.

"President Joe Biden's promises of long-term American support for Afghanistan will no doubt come up when he meets Friday at the White House with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the Afghan High Council for National Reconciliation. What will not be on the agenda, however, is any suggestion that the military withdrawal, due to end Sept. 11, be altered or slowed.

Some are warning that the increase in Taliban violence is evidence that Biden's withdrawal order was a mistake, and that the Afghan government should have been given more time. To the contrary, the level of violence is more a condemnation of the utterly failed strategies of the past two decades and evidence the withdrawal should have been ordered long ago."

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My brother died by suicide

USA TODAY Columnist Connie Schultz writes a deeply personal column about the death of her brother.

"The people who love us most want us to act as if this is all behind us. The people who love us best understand the toll of that pretense.

We are not who we used to be, in ways that we sometimes cannot explain even to ourselves, but we can read the room: Enough of that sadness, please. And so, this grief too often becomes a survivor's biggest secret. It's as if mentioning it makes us contagious."

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