It was always going to end this way
Kabul has fallen. The Graveyard has claimed another victim.
America is not the first Empire to break its back on the spiny terrain of Central Asia, and I very much doubt it will be the last. I’m sure you have seen the memes by now; imperial hubris has fallen on the mountains of Afghanistan since at least the time of Alexander the Great, probably sooner. The British Empire tried not once, not twice, but three times, earning them points for tenacity (or stupidity) at least.
This was always how it was going to end.
It doesn’t take any great prognosticator to see that. All it takes is a decent knowledge of world history. I knew it would end this way even as I watched the first bombs fall and I did not even identify as a historian in those days. Lots of other people knew it too.
Hell, the people who orchestrated and planned the invasion also knew it and they did not care; they knew they would make a ton of money and get plenty of accolades in the meantime and that was all they cared about.
The past few days I have watched many people who have been trying to get us to pull out of Afghanistan for 20 years and end the “Endless War” react in horror when the inevitable happened and the Taliban reclaimed their country. (It is their country, after all; they belong to Afghanistan too.) Did they not connect cause and effect? Did they really not know this would be the result of an American pullout? And now they want us to go back?
Think of the women and girls! They yell in terror.
I am. Believe me, I am. I do not have the power to help them. (And it is probably better for the world that I do not; I would probably get as drunk on petty power as any other human who suddenly had the power of a minor god.) They can not help them either. Neither can you.
Resuming the American occupation would not help either, not in the long term. When we were inevitably forced to pull out again, the Taliban would walk right back in. America is not and can not be the police force for the world. That is also probably a good thing. Imagine that power in the hands of Donald Trump.
Democracy and freedom cannot be imposed from the outside. Outsiders might help, but they cannot impose it. The Taliban had the upper hand from the start. It is their country, after all; we were the interlopers, the invaders, and they had support from many of the people who live there as well.
You can do nothing about the fate of Afghanistan.
What you can do, and should do, is worry about the fate of America, if you are an American. Our country is in serious danger of collapse right now. Political instability is growing worse, as is the pandemic. Our homegrown version of the Taliban is on the verge of making abortion illegal and do you think they will stop there? No; they are already targeting birth control.
The center and the left have ignored them for a generation while they slowly gained political power, just as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Now these unhinged lunatics are trying to outlaw abortion to “save lives” while they also storm school board meetings for the right to expose children to a deadly virus and attack health care workers fighting said virus.
Do you think it will stop there? Did you see what happened on January 6?
The Taliban won the war in Afghanistan. America lost.
You cannot change that. You cannot help the women and girls over there, nor fight for democracy and freedom in Central Asia. You can and should do so here if you feel that strongly about it. The fight in Afghanistan is over.
The future of America remains unwritten.
