Is Afghanistans bloody history doomed to repeat itself?
President Bidens effort to put a positive spin on the US exit from Afghanistan has a familiar ring to it. In the late 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev tried to make the best of a bad job when pulling out Soviet forces, eight years after an occupation that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Afghans and 15,000 Soviet troops. The success of our policy of national reconciliation has already made it possible to begin withdrawing Soviet troops from Afghan territory,  Gorbachev said. Our boys in Afghanistan have been doing their duty honestly, performing acts of self-denial and heroism. The disastrous episode hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union three years after the last troops left. Since Alexander the Great and his army conquered what