Disaster? Calamity? Catastrophe? The last few chaotic days in Afghanistan, as the Americans engage in a shameless act of cowardice and betrayal of their local allies, certainly qualify for all those descriptions.Â
nd of an era? Well, after nearly 20 years, at a cost of at least $1trillion (€850bn) and the lives of 2,300 service personnel, it’s undoubtedly the end of an era. But what should really concern all of us is that we’re not just witnessing the end of an era – we have front row seats for the end of an empire.
Afghanistan is known as the “graveyard of empires†for a reason.Â
The Afghans beat the Brits in the 19th century. They beat the Russians in the 20th century. They beat the Yanks in the 21st century.
They all came. They all saw. But rather than conquer, they all fled.
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The current chaos isn’t just a small embarrassment for America, it’s seriously bad new for all of us. Watching Joe Biden’s belated address to his nation the other night was like watching a boxer throwing in the towel while still insisting he had won the fight.
It was, for anyone who loves the United States of America and regards that country as the greatest nation on Earth, as I do, a craven display of capitulation and moral cowardice.Â
As we rapidly approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the day that changed our world for ever, it looks as if we have just hit the reset button.Â
America has again been humiliated on the world stage and has reminded its enemies it is weak and lacks the stomach for the fight.
Even worse, however, it has also reminded its friends and allies it is weak and lacks the stomach for the fight.
Getting troops out of this infernal charnel house has long been a priority for American presidents. Obama wanted to withdraw. Trump wanted to withdraw. But neither of those men wanted to withdraw in such a craven and chaotic manner; a strategy that now exposes tens of thousands of Afghan locals to revenge attacks and, even worse, puts women’s rights back several hundred years.
Many observers have pointed out there has been something exceedingly odd in the way Biden and his staff have handled this mess. Even as the rest of us watched the TV news and saw the Taliban convoys merrily making their way to Kabul, the US State Department was insisting it would take them at least 90 days to reach the capital. They managed it in less than a fortnight as the Afghan national army fled without a fight.
That the Taliban was able to take control of the strategically-vital city of Jalalabad without a shot being fired in anger was an obvious indicator the army wasn’t going to defend its people.
Yet, for some unfathomable reason, the American officials insisted everything was going according to plan. The problem is nobody seemed to know what that plan was.
A country that likes to style itself as the shining city on the hill and a beacon for the rest of the world has now squandered virtually all of its moral and political capital in this disgraceful and unseemly evacuation.
Like many readers, I’m too young to remember the fall of Saigon, but the images of those helicopters leaving the US embassy are indelibly stamped on all our minds. Now we can replace Saigon 1975 with Kabul 2021.Â
When it comes to US intervention in other countries, the Americans behave in a way that qualifies as clinically insane – they do the same thing over and over yet never learn their lesson. In this case, the lesson is not when to go in but how to get out. We saw it in Vietnam. We saw it in Iraq. Now we’re watching it unfold live in Afghanistan.
I’ve never been a big believer in the old saying that history repeats itself, but when it comes to American foreign policy it’s impossible to demur.
One of the more baffling justifications coming out of the White House is that they went in and did the job. For 20 years, they insist, there were no terrorist attacks planned in Afghanistan and enacted in the West. Well, if that was the case, why are they deciding to leave now?
Numerous former generals have denounced the US president and asserted that he has just made the world a far more dangerous place. That there are already reports of British jihadists leaving Syria to make their way to Afghanistan should send a chill down everyone’s spine.Â
The blood-letting has already begun, and despite the half-hearted efforts of the Taliban leadership to reassure the West they are a new, kinder version, we’ve seen countless reports of beheadings, mass executions and kidnappings of young women to be sex slaves.
After 20 years of relative liberalism and security for women in urban areas, Afghanistan has been dragged back to the 12th century.Â
The expected refugee crisis has already begun, and our Government is now mulling over how many refugees we should accept. A thousand? Fifteen hundred? Two thousand? The one thing we can guarantee is the eventual numbers will be far higher than current estimates.Â
Biden promised that he, unlike his predecessor, would be a uniter, not a divider. Well, he has managed in the sense that he has united CNN and its enemies at Fox News in their condemnation of his actions.
This isn’t just a bad day for Biden. It’s a terrible day for American authority, from which it may never recover and will come at a huge cost.
It’s a cost the rest of us will have to pay.