American arrogance and naivete have done it again. The exodus of Americans from Afghanistan is well under way, and those of us who viewed the exodus from Saigon are having a déjà vu experience. “Operation Iraqui Freedom” was an incalculable waste of wealth and lives, and now, I suppose we are watching the ill-conceived “War on Terror” end with a whimper. What were we doing in Afghanistan, the “graveyard of empires,” anyway? Couldn’t we have learned from 200 years of foreign-policy disasters in Afghanistan, from the British Empire’s series of catastrophes there, from the Soviet Empire’s experience that led to the fall of their Empire? And now we are seeing signs of the collapse of the American Empire.

And what can our foolish statesmen tell the veterans who were physically or mentally maimed there, what can they tell the families of those who were lost in Afghanistan, what could they conceivably say to our service men and women who died there? Yet again Rudyard Kipling’s epitaph for A Dead Statesman comes to mind:

I could not dig: I dared not rob;

Therefore I lied to please the mob.

Now all my lies are proved untrue

And I must face the men I slew.

What tale shall serve me here among

Mine angry and defrauded young?