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 3 - The implications of defeat
This was a disaster that no less than four US presidents had a hand in making. It's a truly bipartisan effort. So it is not an exaggeration to say that defeat in Afghanistan has implications way beyond that battered country’s borders.
If the Soviet defeat, 32 years ago, spelt the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire, and certainly the end of all expeditionary Russian forces until 2015 when they sent troops to Syria, this defeat marks the beginning of the end of the western empire, as the dominant organising military and economic world order.
This order did not collapse because it faced mighty enemies. It collapsed from hubris, arrogance, an inability to analyse and understand the people whose land it occupied. It collapsed at precisely the moment that no other power challenged it and when it had a monopoly of the use of international force.
Like the Soviet Union, it imploded. It lost belief in itself and its leaders. Its leaders lost any sense of public service, lining themselves up with lucrative jobs after they lost power.
Like the Soviet Union, it imploded. It lost belief in itself and its leaders. Its leaders lost any sense of public service, lining themselves up with lucrative jobs after they lost power.
In power, they privatised war, until the very aim of intervention lost any meaning. Foreign policy became corrupted by mercantilism and outsourced to regional allies with their own agenda. If the Taliban knew what they were fighting for, the Afghans who opposed them did not. Least of all did the troops our governments sent there to fight with them.
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