Graveyard of empires indeed ...

And so, finally, President Joe says U.S. troops are to leave Afghanistan, our long war that never found an achievable purpose. 

The easy, obvious and probably inevitable legacy of America’s two-decade-long war in Afghanistan is the recognition that there are limits to U.S. military power, especially when it comes to altering the culture and internal politics of other countries.

... On Wednesday, Biden is expected to announce that he will withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11. The decision will also bring to a close U.S. involvement in a conflict that has spanned four presidents.

... the rise of China, the danger posed by the coronavirus pandemic, the threat posed by global warming and the collapse of the Islamic State have all made terrorism seem like less of a pressing threat.  (Washington Post, April 14, 2021)

Biden seems to have held, and still adhere to, what was the closest to a sane view among our imperial leaders after 9/11: focus on giving organized international Islamist terrorism a bloody nose, and then disengage. That would have saved a lot of lives, especially among people in the unfortunate places where George W and Dick the Snarling Veep saw a chance to play faux heroic cowboy.

Of course, it would have been better to catch and offer up the perps of the 9/11 atrocity to international courts. In 2001, the world would have cooperated and cheered. But empires which have not felt their foundations leach away aren't law abiding.

• • •

U.S. foreign policy elites still don't get it.

Just yesterday on Deep State Radio, I heard the often sharp historian of international relations Kori Schake explain that we shouldn't be disturbed that the US spends 12 times as much on the military as any other nation because: 

"in using military force, you never want to cut close to the margin, because you want to win by a lot because that's how you prevent people from challenging you ..."

What shooting war does Schake think the U.S. empire has won in the last seventy-five years?

I wish we didn't have to have this insanity beat out of us -- and so do the peoples of the world. In the end, we get tired of the bleeding.