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As the world watches the Taliban’s reconquest of Afghanistan and the tragically botched U.S. withdrawal, one has to wonder: "Who lost Afghanistan?"

In his prescient Editor's Note from the summer issue of the Claremont Review of Books, and corresponding interview on The Close Read podcast, editor Charles Kesler examines this searing question on the minds of many across the country and around the world.

We invite you to read the essay, listen to the podcast, and most importantly, to remember our American men and women in uniform still serving in Afghanistan.

Who Lost Afghanistan?

By Charles Kesler

It was truly macabre, President Joe Biden’s plan to end America’s military involvement in Afghanistan on September 11 of this year, 20 years to the day after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, plotted and promoted by al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. As it happens, the military and political scene in that unhappy country is deteriorating fast, and the inglorious deadline for withdrawal has been advanced to August 31.

That spares us, at least, commemorating September 11 as a day of double infamy, coming and going, as it were.

What did we intend to accomplish in that country? Our difficulty in deciding what we thought we were doing over there during “America’s longest war,” as Biden called it on July 8, showed up in the shifting terms we used over the years to describe it. “Invasion” sounded too hostile, “war” too all-in, “liberation” too hopeful, “occupation” too protracted, and so we tended to settle on vapid euphemisms like our “involvement” or “presence” in Afghanistan.

The Claremont Review of Books Podcast

New Episode: The fall of Afghanistan with Charles Kesler

What can we learn from the disastrous withdrawal?

Listen

The summer issue is

now online!

From the Editor's Desk

Highlights from the new issue!

Criminal Negligence

By William Voegeli

Liberals would rather live with crime than fight it.

The New York Times recently reported that Americans suffered 30% more homicides in 2020 than in 2019. “In Chicago and several other cities, last year was the worst year for killings since the mid- 1990s.”

The Masking of America

By Jeffrey H. Anderson

Faceless people make compliant subjects, not good citizens.

We should never fully return to our maskless society where only health care providers donned a mask, because judicious use of masks will continue to save lives” (emphasis added).

Little Italy

By Christopher Caldwell

Less populous, more populist.

Well after dark on an evening in late May, almost silently, an an- ti-smuggling patrol ship from the

Italian Guardia di Finanza approached a commercial pier on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa.

Why Harry V. Jaffa Matters

By Glenn Ellmers

He saw our house dividing once again.

During the cold war the destruction of the American republic under a barrage of Soviet nuclear-tipped

missiles was considered a remote but distinct possibility. Today, we again face the possible end of the American republic.

Right Flight

By Michael Anton

The war between the states.

In the preface to Texas vs. California, Kenneth Miller indicates that he finished his manuscript in May 2020. That makes it unusually prescient for an academic book. For at that time, three key events lay ahead...

Thinking Like a Conservative

By James W. Ceaser

"Conservatism" covers multiple theoretical ideas.

Edmund Fawcett’s Conservatism: The Fight for a Tradition is an expansive volume covering conservative thought and practice since the late 18th century.

Meritocracy's Cost

By Charles Murray

Meritocracy conceals elite disdain for the lives of ordinary Americans.

Michael Young’s novel The Rise of the Meritocracy, published in 1958, was written in the voice of a historian in 2033 describing a meritocratic Britain where talent was identified, nurtured, and rewarded regardless of ethnic or social origins.

Family Matters

By Amy Wax

There is no greater threat to young people’s intellectual development and personal integrity than the progressive ideology dominating schools.

Parenting is hard. Writing well about parenting is even harder. Americans have transformed what was once a natural function, guided by age-old conventions and instincts, into an elaborate, minutely analyzed project beset by conflicting recommendations and expectations.

The mission of the Claremont Institute is to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.