Turning Out the Lights on the U.S. Empire

A big cheer for Joe Biden, who strongly defended his decision to pull out U.S. troops from Afghanistan after our 20-year war there. Could this be the beginning of long-delayed national reckoning about the U.S. Empire? Here's what President Biden said yesterday: "Let me ask those who want us to stay: How many more? How many thousands more American daughters and sons are you willing to risk? And how long would you have them stay... Just one more year of fighting in Afghanistan is not a solution, but a recipe for being there indefinitely... No nation has ever unified Afghanistan, no nation. Empires have gone there and not done it." And now to the long line of failures in the graveyard of empires, we must add the United States.

I deeply sympathize with those many Afghan men and women -- perhaps a majority of the country -- who deeply fear a Taliban takeover, with its hardline Islamist and misogynistic beliefs. But it's up the people of Afghanistan to forcefully resist a Taliban victory. In some provinces, women have reportedly taken up arms to show that they are willing to fight and die to prevent a Taliban victory -- even if the men in the Afghan Army are not willing to do so.

Empires can't impose solutions on foreign countries -- that's been the bloody, tragic lesson that America refuses to learn, from Vietnam to Central America to the Middle East. But now, hopefully, President Biden has begun this much-needed process of national introspection. Of course, the president is still authorizing drone strikes all over the world and flooding client states with military hardware. So the process of demilitarizing America will be a long one.