...and the fall of Saigon
There's a lot of hand-wringing going on about the desertion of Afghanistan by the United Nations and by all those who honourably sought to bring a just and lasting peace to that "war-torn" country.
That's one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at it is that the "Afghanistan Mission" was a NATO operation from the beginning (and a complete crock), predicated on "self-defence" and pursued thereafter as a form of self-interest, the United Nations Security Council Resolutions (1386 et al.) serving as legal cover, but really, not even that, since "Operation Enduring Freedom" went off on its own merry way, allowing for violation of Pakistani airspace and whatever went on at Bagram air base, among other delights, all of that "blindingly obvious" violations of the UN Charter.
Furthermore, any realistic assessment of Afghan "nation building" would have required at least 500,000 UN troops on the ground, and probably double that number if they were white Christians who didn't speak any of the local languages. And even then...
Afghanistan has what is usually described as a "porous" border with Pakistan, but equally it might be said that the Afghan borders are porous to all the surrounding (Muslim) countries, and even China, that has a short but nevertheless Muslim border, of unknown porosity...
Many NATO troops have laid down their lives in Afghanistan, and even more Afghans have, all for purposes that were never honestly defined, any more than was Vietnam.
There are more than enough war crimes to go around in NATO, and at the UN. An honourable exit would be to admit a terrible mistake of policy has been made, and then to negotiate an Afghan future with all the surrounding countries (including Iran, China and Russia) that has more that a rat's ass chance of success. Negotiations will only occur, experience suggests, if the occupying troops are obviously leaving. It's time to leave, but not the way of Saigon.
