Where the War Isn't Ending

It's odd that the Pentagon is looking for air access to landlocked Afghanistan when all the nuanced people tell me Biden "ended" the Afghanistan war.

 Huh:

The U.S. Air Force has now been in the Middle East for more than three decades. Even the end of the Afghanistan War isn’t likely to mean a major drawdown from the region. ...

Indeed, the Air Force probably isn’t done with Afghanistan. Militant organizations such as the Islamic State group’s local branch, ISIS-Khorasan, and al-Qaida are still present there. ...

To support its drone capabilities, the U.S. might seek a deal with a nation bordering Afghanistan to allow clandestine UAV bases, Venable said. But given Russian influence in the region, the Taliban’s strength and the way in which the U.S. left Afghanistan, that might be difficult, he added, even with a friendly nation like Uzbekistan.

Who knew other countries wouldn't see our "brilliant" evacuation from Kabul as evidence of being the "strong horse?"

And who could imagine that fighting jihadis in Afghanistan would be hard without bases and local allies there?

But mostly, who could conceive of the notion that the war would not end because America chose to lose? 

Ah, strategery.

And now Pakistan expects concessions to allow America to control the jihadis that Pakistan supported and helped win:

I really don't think it is a smart idea to reward Pakistan for engineering a Taliban victory by helping Pakistan manage the blowback of the jihadi Taliban winning in Afghanistan. We should demand concessions from Pakistan to launch strikes against jihadis in Afghanistan--which are futile from over-the-horizon, anyway. Let the dog that caught the car figure out what to do with it. And let the Chinese pay for their new ally's problems.

I say let Pakistan and its new buddy China pay to solve this problem that we once contained.

Pity a friendly Iran isn't a route into Afghanistan. Once again we see that Iran is the Gordian Knot sustaining a lot of problems in the Middle East. Sadly, Democrats don't want to cut that knot. They just want to embrace and tighten our ties with the mullah regime.

The war goes on. Notwithstanding Biden's "ending" of the war.