Afghanistan: After Action Report

“To President Theodore Roosevelt - you are like the Wind and I like the Lion. You form the Tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the Ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours. - Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates.” From the movie the Wind and the Lion starring Sean Connery as the Raisuli and Brian Keith as T. Roosevelt President Joe Biden plans to hold a Summit of Democracies in December of 2021. This meeting will bring together all the usual cast of characters of “heads of state, civil society, philanthropy, and the private sector” according to a White House statement. Private citizens will be included but most likely those participants will be screened and have a question to pose to the “leaders” that will undoubtedly be carefully scripted. Nothing will come of this as the US will seek to steer the narrative towards America’s creation of the Post World War II order over which it lords and to trumpet its questionable premise that only it alone is capable of leading because, after all, Americans always work in the best interests of global peace and prosperity and, besides, it has the mightiest military with which to back up its words with violent deeds. What Biden should do and the American people should demand is that a national summit or summits take place within the United States the purpose of which would be to figure out what America is and what it wants to be going forward. New England style Town Hall meetings should be held across the country. The Arsenal of Democracy is in rough shape and, at least from the perspective of millions of its citizens, the national government has lost much of its legitimacy only holding the three branches of government—legislative, judicial and executive—together by virtue of controlling state sanctioned violence. Even that is questionable as a rag-tag band of then President Donald Trump’s supporters could storm the legislative branch with impunity (the US House and Senate on January 6, 2021) and terrorize members of congress who were affirming Biden’s electoral victory. As of this writing, there are members of congress who still believe Trump won the 2020 presidential election and millions of American citizens who agree with them.