World

Dogs are not people. Now, I love my dogs and couldn’t imagine life on our little farm without them. But when we establish false equivalencies, we don’t elevate dogs; we degrade humanity. And that's what we're doing with the dogs of war left behind by the Biden administration in Afghanistan. It is unclear how many dogs were stranded at Kabul airport when the last US flight departed. It’s also unclear how many Americans were stranded. And how many weapons were left. And how much cash...in fact a lot of the disastrous withdraw by the Biden administration is unclear, first and foremost being: why did it happen this way at all?

Sydney Social media is depressing at the best of times, but when you are on Day 60 of a lockdown that doesn’t let you stray more than five kilometers from your house, it’s a nightmare. Open up Facebook, and there’s an old high school mate smugly plopped down in a business class seat heading for Hawaii, toasting you with a glass of second-rate fizz. Flick over to Instagram, and your favorite little hotel in Tuscany has got the long table set for a 'celebration of love’ and the union of a couple who live someplace that doesn’t require exit visas of its citizens.

America's longest war draws to a bloody end. As the pullout deadline approaches, the probability of more atrocities like the suicide bombing last Thursday that killed 13 of our troops, and more than 90 Afghans, remains nauseatingly high. The American public was ready for us to leave Afghanistan. It was not prepared for just how ugly leaving could be. President Biden bears responsibility for the lives lost, just as he bears responsibility for those lost throughout the course of this conflict and the similarly ill-premised Iraq War — both of which he helped to launch while he was in the United States Senate. He has made grave mistakes. One mistake he has not made, however, is to waver from the decision to withdraw. He has not let terrorists change our timetable.

President Biden blames Donald Trump and his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo for the debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal. Mike Pompeo vehemently disagrees. In this exclusive interview with Urs Gehriger of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche, Pompeo sees America's failure in Afghanistan and its loss of credibility as direct results of Biden’s policies of ‘weakness’ and warns that ‘if the Taliban decide that they're going to become violent in a full-on assault, the US should use every element of its military power to protect American interests.’   Lausanne, Switzerland  Urs Gehriger: President Biden announced that he would withdraw all US military forces by August 31. It looks highly unlikely that this can be accomplished.

You have to hand it to the Taliban (or, if you are Joe Biden, the ‘Tally-bahn’): they are both a persistent and an infernally clever lot. As to their persistence, recall that George W. Bush assured us that, ‘thanks to our military, our allies, and the brave fighters of Afghanistan...the Taliban regime is coming to an end.’ That was in December 2001. As of August 2021, they control the country and are as I write issuing ultimatums to the President of the United States: everybody out by September 11, no, make that August 31 — otherwise, there will be ‘consequences’. Oh, and by ‘everybody out’, we don’t mean Afghans who may have worked for the US: they have to stay. There does seem to be a communications breakdown about radical elements in Afghanistan.

However much it is denied, we still live in an imperial age, at least metaphorically. Just as the withdrawal from Afghanistan registers the momentary decline of the American empire, it registers the momentary rise of the Russian and Chinese ones. America failed in Afghanistan because its military, while capable of fighting high-tech wars on land and sea, could not fix complex Islamic societies on the ground. Indeed, Afghanistan demonstrated how the deterministic elements of geography, culture and ethnic and sectarian awareness can vanquish Western ideals of democracy and individual liberty.

Twenty years after 9/11, the War on Terror has come full circle. Everyone expected the Taliban to surge back to power as soon as American forces left Afghanistan. Instead, the surge began while America’s embassy in Kabul was still open, inviting unwelcome flashbacks to Saigon in 1975 and Tehran in 1979. There are piquant memories of 1989, too — not of the Berlin Wall’s fall or a young Francis Fukuyama’s publishing ‘The End of History?’ in the National Interest, but memories of an Afghan insurgency’s triumph over a superpower. That triumph would inspire and ultimately contribute in the most concrete ways to a decade of terrorism, culminating in the 9/11 attacks.

Twenty years of war in Afghanistan are over. What comes next is 20 years, or even more, of recriminations and blame for why the war ended as it did. Scholars and partisans still argue over the reasons America lost in Vietnam, so why should Afghanistan be any different? On the plus side, the debate promises to be far more interesting. When it comes to Vietnam, partisans debate rules of engagement, bombing strategies, funding levels and the Tet Offensive. With Afghanistan, the question could be: did gender studies cause America to suffer its most humiliating defeat ever? Cockburn wishes he was joking. Traditionally, nations have waged war by mustering armies, defeating their enemies in battle, and despoiling their lands and cities.

'There is no light in the bazaar. The Americans brought the light when they came to build the great dam . . . but when they left the took the machine with them and now there is no more light.’ — Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush There really isn’t much that is amusing about Afghanistan. There never has been. But Eric Newby wrote a most amusing book about his trek through the Hindu Kush in the late 1950s. These days, when the Americans decamp from Afghanistan they leave behind tons — literally tons — of lights, not to mention munitions of various sizes and lethality, roads, buildings, communication devices of all sorts — you name it. A few days ago, we were told that the Afghan government might fall within 90 days to the newly resurgent Taliban.

If a friend told you he booked a vacation to ‘goof off and soak in the sun’, you would be forgiven for thinking he had opted for a week on the Costa del Sol. Miles Routledge seems to be a bit different. He’d seen news reports stating that, while the Taliban were making inexorable progress through Afghanistan, it would be months before they seized Kabul. So off he went. Late last week, he was strolling through the bazaars like a typical Brit abroad, snapping pictures of exotic dishes and posting updates on Facebook about the inferior quality of Afghan plumbing. It was just two days into his trip, after the Taliban had marched into the capital and flights out of the city had been canceled, that Routledge, 22, wrote on Facebook: ‘I’m stuck in Afghanistan. Bit of a pickle.

Which US state will be first to legalize bullfighting? OK, I need to qualify the question. A few bloodless corridas were held in Nevada in 2009, and some Portuguese-style bullfighting — again, bloodless — is permitted in California, legally classed as part of religious tradition. It won’t stop there, though. A friend in California breeds fighting bulls for sale to the Mexican market (bloodlines matter more than almost anything else to aficionados, each breeder seeking to stamp his beasts with his own aesthetic). My friend, the son of Mexican immigrants, is convinced it is only a matter of time before the law changes — probably through a referendum. ‘But we don’t want to win with 50 percent plus one. We want a big enough margin to settle the argument.