I have fought in two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, as a Marine, and covered a third war, Syria, as a journalist. I’ve seen friends killed and wounded — been wounded myself — and in all three places witnessed the costs of American miscalculation and hubris. In all that time, across the battlefields of my generation, from Fallujah to the Korengal Valley to Kobane, I have never witnessed a more shameful U.S. failure than that of this week. President Biden’s address to the nation Wednesday featured two statements that were, at best, self-serving interpretations of events, but I would categorize them...