The last straw

As if to underscore the inevitability of the Taliban's return to power, Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan's president has fled the country.

And, according to the Guardian's real time reporting, within 20 minutes of his departure the Taliban had entered Kabul. 

Ghani's departure is a highly symbolic end to to the American effort to stand up Western-style democracy in Afghanistan. Its nation-building project in Afghanistan is now unequivocally at and end.  

The American-Afghan war is, to all intents and purposes, now over, just 53 days shy of a platinum anniversary.   If America's twenty year anniversary gift to Afghanistan would have been china, China might be breathing a sigh of relief.