What does President Biden think of the reversion of the Taliban to the barbarity of its first time in power in Afghanistan? After surrendering Afghanistan to our enemies in the late summer last year, the Biden administration has clammed up tighter than a conch in a mudslide. The question, though, nags, at least at us, in the wake of the interview by our publisher, Dovid Efune, with the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, Ahmad Massoud.

Mr. Massoud is the heir of the martyred leader of our allies in the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud. He was known as the Lion of Panjshir. He was assassinated two days before 9/11. His son is now emerging to keep alive his cause in Afghanistan. In his interview with Mr. Efune he relays word of ghastly crimes, including against two women, who, for having been raped, were beheaded in front of their families.

That crime was covered by Hasht-e Subh, a serious Afghan daily. What is President Biden thinking by turning his back on such reports? It takes us back to the editorial “Afghanistan and Vietnam,” which the Sun issued in April 2021. The editorial quotes journalist Georger Packer’s powerful book “Our Man,” about the late Richard Holbrooke. He was an aide to Secretary of State Clinton working to shore up our side in Afghanistan.

Mr. Packer writes of what happened one day when Holbrooke went over to the White House and encountered Mr. Biden, then vice president. When they fell into a conversation about Afghanistan,  Holbrooke mentioned the women’s issue. Mr. Biden erupted, almost rising from his chair. “I am not sending my boy back there to risk his life on behalf of women’s rights,” he bellowed. “It just won’t work, that’s not what they’re there for.”

When Holbrooke tried to outline the position he and Secretary of State Clinton had taken, Mr. Packer quotes Holbrooke as relating that Vice President Biden “thought it was bullshit, and this spiraled into a much larger discussion concerning the whole course of what would happen, and this was quite extraordinary. Joe took the position, plain and simple, that we have to get out of Afghanistan” and that the administration was “facing a debacle politically.”

This, Mr. Packer quotes Holbrooke as saying, “shocked me and I commented immediately that I thought we had a certain obligation to the people who had trusted us.” To which Mr. Biden replied: “Fuck that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.” Holbrooke protested, “But there are larger strategic consequences here.” To which Mr. Biden demanded, “What are they?”

That is Bidenism. It is what Governor Palin, in her vice presidential debate with Mr. Biden, called the “white flag of surrender.” It is why our allies in the Northern Alliance are being left to fight alone in Panjshir, why pallets of United States Federal Reserve Notes arrive at Kabul on their way, eventually, to the coffers of the Taliban, and why Green Beret veterans of Afghanistan are left to organize private efforts to rescue their loyal Afghan comrades.

We published “Afghanistan and Vietnam” four months before Mr.  Biden surrendered in an effort to end our longest war. We understand that there’s plenty of blame to spread around, and the 20 years America put into the war is not nothing. The catastrophe, though, turned out to be more abject than anyone imagined. It’s humbling to read Mr. Massoud’s interview and his warning of what America may reap if it fails to confront the Taliban.