AFGHANISTAN : AN EPIC DEFEAT FOR THE UNITED STATES

The withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan is an epic failure of American foreign policy, but that doesn't mean the United States won't repeat the same mistakes again in the future.

AMERICAN MILITARY and political interventions in the domestic affairs of other countries invariably end in disaster. A crumbling American Empire that continues to boast of its 'excepionalism' repeats the same mistakes time and time again, regardless of whether its a Democratic or a Republican administration in charge.

Whether its Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan, the United States marches into countries where its not welcome, waving the flag of 'democracy' and the American way, while installing and defending local leaderships that are  both corrupt and authoritarian and have little support within the local populace -  but can be counted on not to upset American interests.

For twenty years - ever since it entered Afghanistan in an hunt for the perpetrators of 9/11 even though the attack on the Twin Towers originated in Saudi Arabia  -  the United States has poured military and financial resources into the country in an attempt to reinvent its civil society. Despite the claims of the progress being made in Afghanistan by the United States - and repeated by its western allies like New Zealand  - the entire flimsy edifice was  built on quicksand and collapsed as soon as the United States began to withdraw its troops.

The speed of the collapse has shocked an Biden administration suffering from an aversion to political reality and now scrambling to find a political position that sounds even half-coherent.

On July 7 Secretary of State Anthony Blinken insisted that the United States was, in fact, not withdrawing from Afghanistan: '...we are staying, the embassy is staying, our programs are staying..if there is a significant deterioration in security, I don't think it's going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday'.

The next day President Joe Biden denied media reports that his intelligence services had told him that the Afghan government was likely to collapse.

'This is not true, they did not reach that conclusion...There is going to be no circumstance where you see people lifted off the roof of an embassy..The likelihood that you're going to see the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely..'

This is same President Biden who told the American people in an address to the nation today that he was always honest and upfront with them. Now his administration has been forced to send in the troops again in order to evacuate its people from an increasingly chaotic situation. The United States could not have scripted a worse conclusion to its twenty year stay in Afghanistan.

Will the United States learn anything from debacle? History suggests not and its failure to fully grasp what was happening in Afghanistan also suggests not. Already Biden is blaming others for this epic failure of American foreign policy, while claiming that the buck stops with him.

Unable to own up to its own mistakes, the United States will no doubt repeat them again in the future. And, if history is any guide, New Zealand will be right there alongside the United States, helping it to repeat its mistakes.

Already Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has stepped up to plate, insisting that the war was not a failure. This is an extraordinary claim for her to make to make when we consider that an estimated 48,000 Afghan civiians were killed as well as 66,000 Afghan military and police. And, as well, some 2,500 US soldiers lost their lives as well as nearly 4,000 contractors. And because America borrowed an eye-watering $2 trillion to pay for this war, the American people will be burdened with the debt for years to come. If this is not failure, then Jacinda Ardern must have an imaginative definition of success.