In retrospect you are always smarter, the Chancellor is right.
The failure in Afghanistan is so obvious today that the opposition can easily speak of a “foreign policy disaster” (Baerbock), “irresponsibility and incapacity to act” (Lindner) or the “blackest point” in Merkel's term of office (Bartsch).
It's also an election campaign.
But has there ever been an honest and sober debate in Germany about the conditions and prospects in Afghanistan in the past twenty years?
Hasn't the Bundestag repeatedly extended the mission, with large majorities and under changing coalitions?
And who was interested in the details when Trump entered into a deal with the Taliban last year that today turns out to be the beginning of the end of the Western modernization project in the Hindu Kush?
Only vague ideas in Berlin
The truth is that the Afghanistan mission was no longer a priority in German politics.
In the end, Germany was the second largest provider of troops because others had already withdrawn in whole or in part.
But in Berlin there was nothing more than the vague idea that one might still be able to secure an election in Afghanistan.
It is as Merkel puts it: When it was clear that Biden would pull out his predecessor, it seemed unwise to bring large numbers of local workers to Germany because that would have endangered development aid, among other things.
Today we know better.
But governments are not clairvoyant, they have to make decisions based on the current situation.
The fact that precisely this was misjudged is what can be accused of the federal government, the American leadership, NATO and many others.
But it didn't start this spring, and it doesn't just affect the now much scolded intelligence services.
In Afghanistan (and elsewhere) the West has dramatically overestimated its transformative powers.
Drawing lessons from this for German foreign policy is the mandate from the Kabul debacle.