Scratch Our Heads And Wonder?

That helicopter should write its memoirs, from Saigon in 1975 to Kabul this week, via Durham County Hall in early May of this year. But if the abused women of Afghanistan are supposed to flee to Britain, then to where are the abused women of Britain supposed to flee? Never mind the abused women of Saudi Arabia? And what of us political dissidents in either Kingdom?

As Matt Purple pointedly asks: “What have 20 years of meddling in Afghanistan bought us? A government ranked as the fifth most corrupt on earth, an opium market responsible for 90 percent of the world’s heroin, guards who take bribes, death squads that execute children, armed forces useless without our air power, and the return of pederasty as a custom across the military and police. And then we scratch our heads and wonder how the Taliban gained ground so quickly. The reason is that they exploited frustrations over a feckless and iniquitous Afghan state that we spent $2 trillion and nearly 6,300 American lives installing and defending.”

It is no wonder that in Qatar in February 2020, Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo signed up to the following: “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban, will not provide visas, passports, travel permits, or other legal documents to those who pose a threat to the security of the United States and its allies to enter Afghanistan.” Even then, it was taken as read that the Taliban were going to win.