Commentary It is not my purpose here to recount to readers as familiar with them as I am the cascade of bad decisions that shamed America in Afghanistan, led to the needless deaths of many people, strained the Western alliance, gravely jeopardized 20 years of social and economic progress in Afghanistan, and may have partially reopened Afghanistan as a nursery and breeding ground of international terrorist organizations. There has naturally been great curiosity about whether the returning Taliban will simply try to take up where the Taliban of 20 years ago left off. A substantial majority of the citizens of Afghanistan are 20 years old or younger and now know nothing of the era when women were severely restricted and such justice system as there was consisted of largely uncorroborated denunciations followed by the severance of limbs or execution. The fact that the former head of the country who was …