Will Taliban victory mark the beginning of the end of the Western empire?

To count the cost of the West's intervention in Afghanistan in US and UK military lives alone is the ultimate proof that we are a civilization in decay

by David Hearst

Part 2 - Collapse of the West

But the fantasy land in which western liberalism continues to operate in West Asia and the Middle East is still instructive. It tells us much about the psychology of a fading empire.

It is in denial. Not least about its role in this disaster.

David Petraeus, the former top US commander in Afghanistan; General Sir Nick Carter, UK's chief of defence staff, and every US and British general who served there bears a heavy burden of responsibility for a war the Afghan people themselves could not sustain and did not want.

None of them could find it in themselves to take responsibility for this disaster and apologise to the Afghan people. They are very far from doing so. Petraeus whines about political betrayal as if another decade of his leaderhship would have solved the problem. No one owns up.

The airpower, which sustained the foreign presence, was not benign. It did not advance Afghan women’s rights. It was a killing machine.

Between 2017 and 2019, the Pentagon relaxed its rules of engagement for air strikes and consequently civilian deaths dramatically increased. By 2019 air strikes killed 700 Afghan civilians - more than in any year since the war began. The Afghan air force (AAF) did likewise. In the first half of 2020, the AAF killed 86 Afghans and injured 103. In the following three months that rate doubled, killing 70 civilians and injuring 90.

Little wonder its pilots were targeted by the Taliban and that morale collapsed after the US withdrawal.

But to indulge in the fantasy that the US and UK militaries were in Afghanistan to do good things is about as far from reality as to say that the puppet regimes the western governments imposed on the country had popular legitimacy. Twice elected president, Ashraf Ghani’s legitimacy lasted exactly five weeks - from 8 July when US President Joe Biden specified a withdrawal deadline of 31 August, to 15 August, when he fled Kabul with his family.

Source, links:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/afghanistan-us-taliban-victory-end-western-empire

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