When the United States and the Taliban last year concluded their agreement on an American outpost from the country, critics in and outside Afghanistan reacted with disgust.
How could the Americans be so gullible, one wondered.
Do they not understand that promises from sharp Taliban negotiators are not worth the paper they are written on?
Others pointed out that an agreement was probably important, but that the agreement they actually reached was a bad one for the United States.
The concessions were too great compared to what they received in return: promises not to make Afghanistan a safe haven for terrorists who want the United States and its allies badly.
The criticism differed in substance, but the critics could at least agree that the United States had failed.
Either through incompetence or by being a little pucked up, to use foreign policy technical language.
Pucked in general and about Afghanistan in particular.
Predicted Taliban victory
In a similar way, many are now wondering how the United States and other Western countries may have been put to bed by the Taliban's lightning - fast advances.
As recently as July, US President Joe Biden said it was "highly unlikely" that the Taliban would take over the entire country.
Was there really no one who could foresee exactly this happening as soon as the foreign forces withdrew from the country?
The answer to that question is yes, or at least no.
That it would go really fast as has now actually happened, perhaps few predicted.
But analysts said that the Taliban had a good chance of taking over the country quickly.
The Taliban themselves were certain of victory and more than happy to share that certainty of victory in the international media.
Conscious choice
Clips from Biden's statement are now widely circulated online, preferably with an ironic undertone.
Think how wrong the world's most powerful old man was, huh?
The problem with this is that Joe Biden is not some kind of independent foreign analyst.
He's a politician.
A politician who really, really wants to pull the United States out of Afghanistan and who thus had very strong incentives to say as he said and preferably even believe in it himself, if possible.
There have been plenty of people around him who have warned of exactly the consequences we are now seeing, so it can hardly be said to be pure ignorance.
Joe Biden has apparently decided that, from an American perspective, it is no longer worth holding the Afghan government in his arms.
Not even if the alternative is a Taliban takeover with its brutal consequences.
Biden wants to focus on China's growing power, not pay for perpetual war where large parts of support are betrayed by corrupt actors.
Not clumsiness
This fact is, of course, a grief to the many who are affected, directly or indirectly, by Taliban violence.
But they are also not doing them any favors by telling themselves that it is pure clumsiness that governs US action.
These are balanced decisions, even if one does not always exclude others.
That Biden said that the Afghan military certainly manages the Taliban gallantly does not change that.
Of course, the above does not mean that politicians can or should simply say anything that happens to suit their political interests, or any wishful thinking.
There are also knowledgeable and insightful politicians.
But when it comes to foreign policy, politicians' statements are surprisingly often treated as expert analysis rather than - just that - politics.