The US defeat in Kabul is unprecedented, even if for now it is not perceived as such, beyond the images of the humanitarian crisis coming from Kabul. At least not by everyone.
Allister Heath, chief editor of the Daily Telegraph, talks about America's dramatic decline. The American era is ending, he says. Its elites are confused, the stupidity and incompetence shown in the Afghan withdrawal confirm that they do not understand the rest of the world and are not fit to run their own country. Blinded by a “simplistic universalism”, they no longer understand religion, tribalism, history, national differences or why countries want to govern themselves. The American predilection for “second-rate gerontocrats” like Joe Biden is unrivaled. Full of self-doubt, its elites in the throes of a bizarre “awakening” centered on a nihilistic and ungrateful self-contempt, they have no more values to sell, neither capitalism, nor democracy, nor the American dream.
“How can people who live in terror of 'micro-aggressions' find within themselves the ability to defeat real evils?”.he asks.
The famous Stanford economist Niall Ferguson in The Economist speaks openly of “the end of the American empire”.
And he says it won't be peaceful. "A crucial source of British interwar weakness was the intelligentsia revolt against the Empire and more generally against traditional British values," recalls Niall Ferguson. "Churchill recalled with disgust the Oxford Union debate in 1933 that led to the motion, 'This house refuses to fight for the king and the country.' And as he observed: 'It was easy to laugh at such an episode in England, but elsewhere the idea of a decadent and degenerate Britain took deep roots and influenced many calculations'”.
Rod Dreher writes that America is experiencing its "Chernenko moment" in reference to the oldest and most fragile of Soviet leaders.
In an interview with La Nef entitled "American Decadence", philosopher Paul Gottfried explains: "The 'liberal democracies' are at war with themselves. I don't see how the Western world can recover from the ravages of its fight against 'prejudice', which has now taken the pernicious form of a war on identity."
Paul Domjan on Tellimer establishes a comparison between America today and the fall of the Roman Empire.
And in this regard there is the analysis of one of the most famous former FBI special agents and anti-terrorism experts, Ali Soufan, who interorgated the main 9/11 attackers on the importance of the conquest of Kabul.
The Islamists, reveals Soufan, are comparing the triumph in Afghanistan to the victory of the barbarian tribes who devoured the provinces of the Roman Empire, until they were able to advance on the capital, Rome, which fell like a prune in 410. From Yemen to Lebanon to Palestinian enclaves to Tehran and across North Africa, Islamists congratulate the Taliban and celebrate their victory, Soufan told the SpyTalk podcast. “And they believe they will be victorious when they take Jerusalem”.
He says Islamists are right to be optimistic. "Before 9/11, the United States had embassies in Libya, Yemen, Syria. All gone now. What remains of the American embassy in Kabul operates in the temporary housing of the international airport, surrounded by the Taliban”. The Taliban victory is" much bigger than Kabul, "concluded Soufan. “This is a gigantic geopolitical shift”.
Coincidence or just black mood? For days, the leading French newspaper Le Monde has been dedicating a series to the fall of the Roman Empire…
Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.