Amid all the finger pointing and playing the blame game of who is responsible for the “loss” of Afghanistan, there should be one essential point to remember: we’ve been down this road before, folks, lest we forget Vietnam 1975. As George Santayana said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

What will it take the United States, or more appropriately the United States government to learn from the past, to remember the errors of the past and not to repeat them . . . endlessly and so unnecessarily?

Did President Biden err in pulling out the troops from Afghanistan? Should he have waited, perhaps moved more slowly? Maybe. But wouldn’t that have simply delayed the inevitable? The fact is Biden’s predecessor, Trump, negotiated this withdrawal. Biden is not to blame for a U.S. policy that was flawed from the outset some 20 years ago. Again, we did not learn the lessons from the past. U.S. policy in Vietnam was flawed from the outset as well. You cannot create a fighting force unless there is determined will within that force to fight vigorously against all enemies foreign and domestic. If the will is not there all efforts to instill it will fail as has happened in Afghanistan and as happened in Vietnam.

The truth is in Afghanistan as was the case in Vietnam the forces opposed to the United States and its puppet regime and military force were determined fighters, zealous in fighting for their cause, pitted against a government force that was corrupt and not driven by any comparable zeal. What has happened in Afghanistan as what happened in Vietnam 46 years ago was inevitable. We wasted vast amounts of capital and thousands of lives needlessly.

We can debate ad nauseum the righteousness or justness and their opposites attributable to both sides of the conflict in Afghanistan, just as was done in Vietnam, but that misses the point: a cause is only as strong as the will of the people espousing it to defend and fight for it. You can have all of the best intentions in the world, but if the will to fight for those intentions is lacking, your efforts will inevitably end in failure.

This simple fact, however stark it may be should be indelibly imprinted into the minds and soul of the American government and people to ensure that future governments do not embark so foolishly and cavalierly on the folly of trying to instill American values in populations that are not willing to defend and fight for them. We cannot be nation builders. Nation building is a process that must occur from within the population itself. It cannot be imposed. The people have to want it, pure and simple, and be willing to fight for it.

So, let’s stop blaming Biden for the past failures of American foreign policy. He is simply cleaning up a mess. And as anyone who has ever had to clean up a mess knows, cleaning up a mess is a messy business itself.