WHATEVER happens in Kabul from here on in, it's impossible to see how the United States mission to withdraw all of its troops, and to ferry out Afghanistan civilians will them, will be completed by tomorrow's August 31 deadline.
President Joe Biden might still make some sort of symbolic closure statement, but his threats to avenge last week's dual suicide bomb attacks will not be done by long-distance missile alone.
Mr Biden will need US boots on the ground.
The US may have signed a peace agreement last year with the Taliban, but as the past bloody week of mayhem has shown, the Taliban is not the only force in Afghanistan.
The US had hopes of dealing with the Taliban because it was viewed as more moderate than the alternatives, even if it had been classified as a terrorist organisation early on in the War On Terror.
To more radical groups, including this latest branch of Islamic State - known as ISIS-K - the Taliban were no better than collaborators.
Hence the attacks in Kabul last Thursday, which killed 13 US soldiers and 72 Afghans, and wounded many more, including another 16 US troops.
ISIS-K has claimed responsibility, and posted online a photograph of one of the bombers.
The horror in Kabul makes a mockery of the Taliban's claims to be in control of the country.
It is now obvious that even after the fall of the democratic government and the departure of Western forces a bitter civil war will continue.
The US has warned that another attack in Afghanistan is inevitable.
Emboldened Islamists may again set eyes on the West.
Maybe COVID proved too much of a distraction, but the mass airlifting of Afghan civilians to safe havens should have happened long before now, when a full force troops remained in place.
The operation was so badly botched that Mr Biden's defence - that he inherited a deal cut by the discredited Donald Trump - will not stand scrutiny.
George W. Bush sent troops into Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Barack Obama's declaration in May 2011 that bin Laden was dead, was just the half-way point, then, in this bloody conflict.
The cost has been enormous, and the conflict looks far from finished, even if Mr Biden wants to say the war is over.
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