Stephen Colbert pulled off “the Band-Aid” on Monday’s edition of The Late Show, devoting his whole opening monologue to the Taliban’s control of Afghanistan and the US exit from the nation.

“The U.S. has been there for 20 years. We spent $2 trillion. We trained a 300,000-man strong Afghan army, and the Taliban took it over in 10 days,” Colbert said. “The country is in complete chaos.”

He went on to say, “It’s hard to argue that the White House didn’t shank the withdrawal.” The fast fall of Afghanistan’s western-backed democratic government and the mayhem in Kabul quickly contradicted the Biden administration’s projections of a peaceful exit. On July 8, Biden stated that a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was “not inevitable” and “highly unlikely.”

“That is the most inaccurate prediction from a president since Abe Lincoln said ‘see you after the play!’” Colbert joked.

Colbert then switched to a photo of a military chopper departing Kabul, which has drawn parallels to a photo of US military forces fleeing Saigon during the Vietnam War.

“Not a flattering comparison,” he observed. “You never want to see this [Yelp] review: The food was excellent, and the line up to the salad bar was like the Fall of Saigon.”

But, according to Colbert, Republican criticism of Biden’s handling of the situation is unfounded; Trump’s policies as president – reducing US troops from 15,000 to 2,500, negotiating a ceasefire with the Taliban without consulting the Afghan government, persuading the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners – “set the stage” for the “debacle.”

President Biden has received a lot of flak for his handling of the pullout, according to Colbert, “because he’s the President.” He then cut to a tape in which Martha Raddatz of ABC spoke about the US’s “massive intelligence failure.”

“That’s got to sting,” he said, “when people describe your foreign policy the same way they describe Ron DeSantis.”

The majority of Americans — as much as 70% – support the departure of US forces, just as they did after the original invasion 20 years ago. Colbert said, “Do you know how few things 70 percent of Americans agree on? I think it’s this and extra cheese, which also often ends badly and faster than you planned.

“So, in the end, you can make us accept that there was no good alternative, but you can’t make us feel good about it,” he concluded. “The only people who can feel good about this are the service members and their families who aren’t going to see soldiers sent into harm’s way for no reason that the commander-in-chief of either party can articulate.

Colbert ended his monologue by saying that for the last 20 years, every presidential administration has encouraged the American people to “care about the plight” of the Afghan people, particularly the country’s women.

“We did care, and that’s not going to change. All that’s changed is that there’s nothing we can do about it now,” Colbert said. “So pulling out might be the right thing to do, but it’s heartbreaking; it’s humbling when the right thing feels so wrong.”