Humiliation can be good for you

The United States has fallen into the habit of frittering its strength away in non-strategic wars against countries that do not really threaten it. This ultimately undermines American power, and in the country’s own interest (as well as the world’s) it should change its ways.

U.S. soldiers, pictured in Afghanistan, June 16, 2010. The humiliation in Afghanistan is a chance for Americans to reconsider their country’s behaviour. As Rudyard King wrote at the end of the second Boer War in 1901, 'We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good,' writes Gwynne Dyer. Photograph courtesy of U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. William Tremblay

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

August 18, 2021

LONDON, U.K.—The footage on Aug. 16 of a giant USAF transport taking off from Kabul airport with desperate Afghans clinging to its fuselage—and then dropping off—will find a place alongside the iconic shot of Americans queueing for the last helicopter on the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon ...

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