Friday, August 13, 2021

Run, run away – Vox Popoli

To absolutely no one’s surprise who knew the first thing about The Graveyard of Empires, the US empire is in what was always the absolutely inevitable full retreat from Afghanistan.

The Taliban seized the cities of Ghazni and Herat on Thursday, in the most dramatic string of captures since launching their offensive. Taking the strategically important Ghazni increases the likelihood the Taliban could take the capital Kabul.

There is also heavy fighting in the second largest city, Kandahar.

The insurgents have moved at speed, seizing new territories almost daily, as US and other foreign troops withdraw after 20 years of military operations.

The city of Qala-I-Naw also fell to the Taliban, who now control about a third of the country’s regional cities and most of northern Afghanistan. The group’s rapid advance has dealt a crushing blow to government security forces.

Sources have told the BBC that Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, is also now in the hands of the Taliban, though this has not been confirmed.

As it happens, Kandahar has already been taken by the Taliban, while the USA and the UK prepare to stage a recreation of the retreat from Saigon in 1975.

Afghanistan’s second-largest city, Kandahar, fell into the hands of Taliban insurgents, a spokesman for the militant group and local government officials said early Friday. A local government official later confirmed to the Reuters news agency that the militants had taken the city following “heavy clashes late last night.”

Hours before the Taliban claimed control over Kandahar, the US announced plans to deploy 3,000 troops temporarily to aid the evacuation of its embassy staff. Another 1,000 US soldiers will be sent to Qatar for technical and logistical support, and some 3,500 to 4,000 will be positioned in Kuwait to deploy if needed.

“We’ve been evaluating the security situation every day to determine how best to keep those serving at the embassy safe,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price. “We expect to draw down to a core diplomatic presence in Afghanistan in the coming weeks,” he said, adding the embassy would not be closing.

Britain is also deploying some 600 soldiers to Afghanistan to help evacuate UK nationals in the country, UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said.

But the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan is just the punctuation mark. What we’re witnessing is the end of the US empire, with all the alien rulers, corrupt judges, illegitimate government, incompetent generals, foreign profiteers, and hordes of invading migrants, moral degeneracy, and declining religious faith, morale, and national confidence that customarily accompanies such events. If history is any guide, this is not going to be turned around, so it is time to stop thinking in terms of “preserving” and “conserving” and “restoring” that which is destroyed, and start thinking in terms of building anew with the benefit of the lessons learned from the decline and fall of the United States of America.

The lesson, as always, is this: sink the damn ships!

https://voxday.net/2021/08/13/run-run-away/