Imperialist folly?: Nowhere in Biden’s justifications did he recognise that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 merely perpetrated unnecessary deaths and unleashed unrealistic hopes, says the writer. — Reuters
SENIOR American officials were adamant: Kabul 2021 would bear no resemblance to Saigon 1975. The chaos of the final episode in America’s Indochinese misadventure would not be revisited.
Like so many other predictions about Afghanistan, it turned out to be fatally flawed. Over last weekend, the visual image of helicopters frenziedly ferrying people out of the US embassy compound in the capital city’s green zone inevitably evoked a sense of Saigon redux. Ultimately, though, the scenes at Kabul airport might indeed have persuaded some observers to acknowledge this was different. Because it was worse.
