The day the American Empire began to sink - Walla! news

Empires are falling slowly.

Sometimes after hundreds of years, sometimes after a few tens.

In some cases, they remain a pale shadow of themselves and indulge in a past that will not return.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States was still the only superpower in the world.

All in all, a decade has passed since the end of the Cold War, and America has been perfumed by the sense that history has come to an end.

The Eastern bloc collapsed, and Western and capitalist liberalism ostensibly prevailed.

Post-Soviet Russia was still trying to understand its place in the new global order, and China, which remained communist only on its cover, opened its closed economy to the world.

In front of them, the United States managed to mobilize two international coalitions against two unruly regimes - Saddam in Iraq and Milosevic in Yugoslavia - and stopped them militarily effectively when they threatened world peace.

As befits the arrogance that characterizes seven empires, it has missed the bubbling happenings in the periphery of its sphere of influence.

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Until that morning, the United States was the only superpower. The Twin Towers are going up in flames (Photo: Reuters)

One of them was the growth of al-Qaeda, which was formed at the end of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan, in which the United States sided with the Mujahideen.

The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, after a decade of war away from home, was a catalyst for the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later.

The American Empire is not expected to fade in two years, but it is hard to ignore the feeling that accompanies its withdrawal from Afghanistan and the comparisons that arise to the Soviet withdrawal.

Not necessarily actually the decision and understanding that the United States cannot, and does not want to, be the policeman of the world.

The concern is a world of how the mission was planned for a good few months and ended in a fiasco and return to Taliban rule, part of the regression forces it claimed to subdue in its enlightenment.

The reconquest of Afghanistan illustrates how much that black day was the day the American Empire began to sink.

Not only because of the crash of the planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, but because she took advantage of her international credit to embark on a dubious crusade that was a diligent failure in hindsight.

The crusade ended in a lame retreat.

American coffins killed in a terrorist attack in Kabul last month (Photo: Reuters)

The operation against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan has been justified and legitimate and has prevented further significant terrorist attacks within the United States to date. However, it soon became part of a broader vision of the neo-conservative Bush administration - an American crusade to bring the gospel of democracy to Muslim countries and the division of the world into good good through a dichotomous evil axis. He inherited the first black president in American history, Barack Obama, who was elected in part because he promised to end the war in Iraq that was opened because of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam did not have at all.

Obama continued his US presence in Afghanistan even after the climax of the assassination of Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan. The successful operation, landed a fatal blow on al-Qaeda, but not on global terrorism that wore a new mantle in the form of the Islamic State. "Afghanistan has become a problem for two more presidents, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, perfect opposites who have agreed on almost one thing - it's time to leave Afghanistan and end it."The never-ending wars. "

And while the bad guys in the story remain on their feet and the good ones measure back to their country after two decades and an investment of trillions of dollars, the shock waves are felt in the center of the empire.

The 9/11 attacks have largely changed the United States.

The clash of civilizations that shattered the American vision in the Middle East and beyond has since reached the doorstep of the United States.

Not only the seemingly backward peoples did not accept the yoke of the Western Torah.

Large sections of the American public today have adopted to formulate non-liberal ideologies, which seek to establish an authoritarian regime in the spirit of Trump, who continues to spread his lies to the masses.

At the same time, Republican states are passing laws restricting the right to vote and perform abortions as part of a battle that will decide the war on the image of the United States.

Although it is too early to mourn the nation that won two world wars in the last century and remains a magnet for immigrants thanks to its wealth and the variety of opportunities it provides, there is no guarantee that the United States will remain so. On the contrary, it will be an anomaly in history saturated with the fall of even larger and wider empires. Its rivals for world hegemony, China and Russia, have no interest in human rights or other basic freedoms on which the West is founded. These are just obstacles for them, and they test American determination to defend its values ​​at various points in the world, from Ukraine to Taiwan.

At present, the United States seems to be regrouping and contenting itself with limited diplomatic and economic sticks to advance its policies. More than the war on terror has changed the world, it has changed it.

As the last 20 years have shown, the good ones, if there are any, do not always win. Not even in Hollywood.