You can divide media and political opinion on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan roughly into two camps. One believes the United States should’ve stayed — and, in fact, should re-intervene in the country this very minute — to protect Afghan human rights and fight the country’s terrorists. This was more or less the position pushed over the past few weeks by the establishment press and national security mavens like former Trump adviser H. R. McMaster, who, among other things, straight-up lied to cable news viewers when he claimed that the local ISIS affiliate responsible for last week’s attack on Kabul was “a cutout for the Taliban so they could humiliate us on the way out.”

On the other side, largely among left-wing and independent media and antiwar political figures, you’ve got voices arguing that the main threat to Afghan human rights was the foreign presence in Afghanistan itself, and that ending US involvement is the best in a sea of bad choices. Continuing the US-led war, they argue, would only mean more American lives and wealth squandered and siphoned off by unscrupulous profiteers, and add to the list of atrocities against Afghans that made them resentful enough to consider giving the Taliban a second chance in the first place.

When ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) attacked the Kabul airport last week, killing at least 170 Afghans and thirteen US soldiers, the event was, predictably, seized on by the pro-war faction as a rationale to keep troops in the country.