"Experts are worried the Afghanistan withdrawal may lead to the spread of global terrorism." No they’re not. First, pundits are not experts. People like Bolton have horrible track records predicting world events. They are more accurately professional prevaricators and provocateurs.

For most my military career and into retirement, whenever I hear people assert that Bush's Foreverwars have saved the USA from global terrorism, my retort is this: "We are safe from terrorism because camels cannot swim." Most people in these backwater Middle East countries a) cannot speak English, b) have never set foot on a commercial airliners, c) would not know how to buy a ticket to the USA or EU, d) even if they do know how to buy a ticket, they lack the funds, e) even if they had the funds and bought a ticket, they have no idea how to navigate once at their destination, nor how to obtain weapons and bombs. Thus, as we have seen over the years, the few who try get caught before they do any harm. A through E have not changed in 20 years.

We also need to remember that Bin Laden was not even in Afghanistan. He met his end in his terrorist command compound (LOL) in Pakistan. The post-Afghanistan torrent of journalism reflects that the War on Terror has been mostly gaslight. Matt Yglesias recently posted an interesting essay [https://www.slowboring.com/p/afghan-war] reminding us how we got into this mess by describing the DOD doctrine driving post-9/11 military action. Afghanistan was basically a smokescreen that opened the door to invading Iraq - the target all along (unfinished Bush family business). Cheney knew all along that WMD was fiction, so his staff isolated the WH from those with knowledge of Iraq's lack of WMD until after their useful idiot had convinced Congress that the WMD threat was real. At least Powell had the integrity to resign once it became obvious that he was a patsy. The US would be better off focusing its war on terror inward - on the rising tide of American fascism.