America’s Defeat by the Taliban: The Beginning of the Countdown to the End of the American Empire

The victory achieved by the Taliban over America and the humiliating defeat inflicted on the country mark the beginning of the end of the American empire era. In fact, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which America described as the biggest of its kind in the country’s history, was not planned. Instead, it was a quick and humiliating escape that saw the U.S. leaving its weapons behind without even managing to destroy them. Moreover, the whole world witnessed the defeated American troops’ failure to save the lives of their agents, who were left clinging to and falling to death from U.S. military planes. These aircraft fled the country in a hurry with American soldiers on board.

Joe Biden admitted America’s failure in training and leading the Afghan army over 20 years, despite the country’s continuous training, arming and financing that amounted to trillions of dollars. He also acknowledged that a large number of U.S. forces suffered from physical and psychological disabilities, and many of them committed suicide. This reminds us of the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s statement, “We will make them commit suicide by jumping from the walls of Baghdad.” But there is a difference between a fighter who fights for his country, faith, land and homeland, and a mercenary who kills children and civilians and destroys their cities after occupying them. These acts generate questions, doubts and unhealable psychological complexes that consequently lead to suicide.

Afghanistan was occupied after the 9/11 attacks 20 years ago. These events are still ambiguous and cast doubts on the details and actors of the attacks. Perhaps time will later solve this puzzle. Similarly, Iraq was destroyed by America on the grounds of a lie that said Iraq owned weapons of mass destruction, after America and Zionism failed to destroy Iraq in the 1991 war. This conflict was provoked by the U.S. by dragging Iraq into a war with Kuwait. America had been planning for this war since Iraq achieved victory in its 1988 war with Iran. The U.S. wanted to destroy the Iraqi army, which, according to military estimates, was the fourth strongest army in terms of expertise, training and military doctrine, and the one with the highest number of professionally trained military. Just as America failed in Afghanistan, it failed in Iraq. As confessed by the notorious Paul Bremer, America brought a false democracy to Iraq: corrupted administration, corrupters and sectarianism.

America is paying today and will tomorrow for its murders and terrorist acts. In its search for weapons of mass destruction that were wrongly alleged to be abundant in Iraq, America killed no fewer than 1 million Iraqi children with its barbaric and demonic siege. Furthermore, when the dead and buried George H.W. Bush was repeating his phrase, “the new world order,” his cowardly missiles were bombing the civil foundations of Iraq. Today his successor, Biden, is repeating a completely different slogan, which is that the U.S. will no longer play the role of the policeman that Bush was referring to.

We know the reasons behind the collapse and decay of previous empires such as the Roman, Persian and Soviet; these factors are present in the American empire. America will not get away with its sins against the children of Iraq, both in this world and in the hereafter; but the torment of the hereafter is more severe and cruel. Human history will also continue narrating the stories of America’s crimes that stained its hands with the blood of Iraq and Afghanistan’s children, especially under George W. Bush and the despicable Tony Blair*.

*Editor’s Note: Tony Blair was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1997-2007.