"DEATH TO AMERICA!"

The biggest casualty of Afghanistan is a mortally wounded US Empire.

Total Indo-Aryan Victory

The jig is up. A brief token skirmish for Kabul city gave way to Taliban soldiers, almost all young provincial men, merrily enjoying the combination of foreign direct investment and regime corruption like this theme park. Kabul, and with it Afghanistan, is theirs. It has the eternal feel of revolution. The ‘Afghan government’ now in exile has no options but a doomed LARP in the Panjshir Valley, which Russia and China will not entertain, and the US Government is scrambling to finish evacuations and embassy security during negotiations.

Back in the Columbian Imperium, Washington, D.C., every emotion but fear is running high—a luxury of being nowhere near Afghanistan; nowhere near the shrapnel, nowhere near the looting and street crime, nowhere near the blackouts (my readers in SFBA are encouraged to shelter in place), nowhere near the chaos that comes with world historical change borne on the truck beds of Toyota Hilux technicals driven by men on a mission from Allah.

The US Government has finally become realistic about its own power—“US forces can’t help American’s flee to Kabul Airport” says that changeable link:

The Pentagon on Wednesday acknowledged that it does not currently have the capability to safely escort Americans in Kabul to the airport for evacuation as the Taliban consolidate control in Afghanistan’s capital.

“I don’t have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said when asked about those who cannot reach the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul because they are behind Taliban checkpoints.

In March: “Pentagon chief speaks of ‘responsible end’ to war”. Ouch, Lloyd.

On American news, a certain type of stunned female anchor does her best to enunciate like other Serious People—is it our hysteria she wants to quell, or hers?—“What we’re seeing now is”, “an evolving” then “deteriorating situation”, “Intelligence assessments”, “official reports”—and now, “what comes next” and “the new government”. My favorite from August 15th was official reports. The same global Overstate petite bourgeoisie caste who affect schoolmarm voices when lecturing us with Expert-American inflected wisdom on COVID-19 now haplessly sputter about whose fault this all is. They are quite right to be afraid.