The Graveyard of Empires

Commentary

The colossal Afghanistan screw up has added one more nail to America’s coffin

You might have noticed that I’ve been silent as the botched American withdrawal from Afghanistan has been dominating the news. My silence is not because I have nothing to say or because I don’t have an opinion. No, it’s not that. It’s because I am so livid, so angry, so disgusted by what I’m seeing, what we’re all seeing, every day and every hour, that I truly needed some time to calm down lest I write something I’d regret.

This week has been a blot on America and everything this country is supposed to stand for. The Afghanistan debacle, going on 20 years now, has been so misguided, from the start, that there are just too many categories of blunder to deal with in one short column.

This withdrawal, ordered for no apparent reason except to honor a badly negotiated “peace” treaty signed by the last administration, and to commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, is supposed to end the longest war in U.S. history. But, in reality it’s a war that has seen no American in-country casualties in over a year-and-a half and a withdrawal that, first and foremost, has created a horrific humanitarian crisis due to what appears to have been a complete lack of planning or foresight by the administration, exacerbated by a massive logistical failure by the Defense Department, a complete breakdown by our intelligence community, and a State Department bureaucracy being inflexible and, well, too bureaucratic. When you add the tone-deafness and defensiveness of our leaders, from the president on down, it’s no wonder I’m disgusted.

But you know what, you can read all about this from writers more intelligent and incisive than I. You can watch and listen to the details on cable news and you can see the calumniation of Biden and his team non-stop on the Fox News Channel…boy I bet they’re relishing this.

So, I’ll stop now. But, in stopping, I also wanted to let you know that I’ve decided to ease off a bit on blog posting while I work on a few other projects. If I was a real writer, I’d call it a book leave. Those of you who’ve followed Around the Block for years might recall I’ve announced this kind of hiatus before. Inevitably however, I saw or read something that moved me to opine or to satirize, and Around the Block came back. We’ll see how this one goes. I will say however, with some conviction, in the immortal words of the last beneficiary of a California gubernatorial recall election, “I’ll be baaack.” And when I do, I hope in the equally immortal words of “Hamilton’s” King George III, “you’ll be back” as well.