Daily Times

There can be no bigger indictment of America’s so-called war against terrorism than the fact that it proved to be the single biggest trigger for the largest, most extreme spread of terrorism across the world in its known history. And, of course, what could be more embarrassing for Washington that it ended with the Taliban driving them out of Kabul, 20 years after US forces used their military superiority to end the Taliban regime? The force that is now called the New Taliban, largely because most of the old guard was bombed to death, is basically local rural farm hands or, at best, vegetable sellers in small markets by day, and revolutionary insurgent fighters by night. They did not even have proper wireless contact with most of their field commanders. And the best battle-field medical kits they had were axes, which they used to carry out on-the-spot amputations, etc.

The 20 years during which they fought off the Americans from Afghanistan also saw the war against terrorism reach Iraq and, in the guise of leading-from-behind support to the Arab Spring, to Libya and Syria. And this war effort left every new place it touched far worse than before, and in each it unleashed terrorist forces even more repugnant than in the last one. Al Qaeda’s branches, which have different names in different countries, and especially the Islamic State (IS), which is similarly spread across continents, are in fact a direct result of what the Americans marketed as their campaign to spread democracy and human rights in struggling, backward countries.

Mercifully, while the dust from the Afghan retreat was still settling, US President Joe Biden said, before anybody could bring him to the subject, that America would no longer police the world and implied that it would keep its obsession with democracy and human rights confined to its own borders. That is a very small relief but even this lesson has been learnt from this ugly, brutal and completely needless war, it can at least be hoped that such misadventures will not be contemplated again. *