There can’t be many Americans who would not say the war in Afghanistan has been a mess — one folly after another.

And now Joe Biden has done what the previous two presidents wanted to do but did not have the strength or courage to do. After 19 years, he is getting U.S. troops out.

The longest war in history is drawing to a close — for us.

The question is whether, much as most of us desire it, this is the right course.

For the worst fears of many are proving out before the eyes of the world: The Taliban is overrunning much of the country. A civil war is already raging, with the Talibanlooking to have the upper hand. And it is going to be brutal and bloody for two kinds of people in Afghanistan — those who helped the United States through the years and women who do not want to go back to a rightless, uneducated, chattel status.

It would be unconscionable to abandon these two groups.

Here is the dilemma: Democracy and civil liberty have very little standing, support or chance in Afghanistan. The good cause and the good guys, such as they are, are not going to prevail on their own. Not any time soon. Maybe not ever.

And the Taliban are going to be sore winners.

Having won the war once — in 2001 — and driven the Taliban from power, and having spent nearly two decades failing to win and barely holding the peace, is the United States prepared to let the Taliban take Afghanistan at last?

And spill much blood, including much innocent blood, in the process?

Surely not.

President Biden is the kind of president who can admit a mistake. He needs to admit his mistake in getting out of Afghanistan so totally and precipitously, and, with help from NATO and the United Nations, establish an international peacekeeping force there immediately.

This force should include air power, a strike force and enough ground troops to hold the line.

This will not establish liberty and democracy, either. But it will prevent a bloodbath. And while that is not an optimal or inspiring goal, it is the best we can do right now, and better than carnage.

The blood from that carnage would be on our hands, as well as the hands of the Taliban, and it would also dishonor the American military who fought and died in Afghanistan to keep what is about to happen from happening.

The president is an alliance guy. Let’s get our allies and the U.N. involved again.

Could another, renewed policing action last a long time? Maybe even another 19 years? Yes. But, we made this broken place even more broken. We have an obligation to not just walk away when it is falling to pieces.

Look, going into Afghanistan was folly to begin with. We see that clearly now.

Thinking that it would be easy to teach the ways of freedom after an initial military victory was the ultimate folly.

Please, God, may we learn our nation building and neo-colonial lesson at last.

The president’s instinctive call — we gave it our best; 20 years is enough; only Afghans can ultimately stop the Taliban — is what most American feel.

But at this point, that call may be the final folly.

We now have a practical problem: stand by and watch the slaughter of innocents in a place where we bear some moral responsibility, or act?

Sooner or later, preferably sooner, the president is going to have to act.

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS