The Dream Palaces of the Americans – Tablet Magazine
For twenty years, official Washington, DC dared not describe Afghanistan as it truly is and would be after America s exit. It would have been gauche to do so worse, it would have shown that one lacked vision, high ideals. Anyone who didn t believe there was a democratic polity just waiting to escape its despotic chains and unleash its liberal energies was guilty of the soft bigotry of low expectations that is, a racist. In this fun-house-mirror version of Afghanistan, America was building yet another city on a hill, a citadel whose government would promote Western gender theory s latest findings, which would be enforced by elite special forces units trained by American officers and loyal to the central government in Kabul.
These elements of the Afghani dream-state were part of a bespoke tapestry spun out by and for the policy establishment and Beltway defense contractors, NGO workers, think tank experts, and the rest of the client state. So long as everyone was getting paid, the mirage never hurt anyone unless your child happened to subscribe to the fiction and put his or her life in danger either in uniform or as an aid worker. But now, the dream palace has burned to the ground, and as the smoke clears no one can mistake the fact that authentic Afghanistan is in the hands of the Taliban.
And this history ends in a ditch.