The fall of Kabul is deja vu all over again

Life feels real as you grown older because it acquires texture - the more it seems like a book or film the more it seems real.

This is particularly true when you feel your life experience starts suddenly to be part of history. 

The fall of Kabul seems very like the fall of Saigon. 

I remember the fall of Saigon, therefore I exist.

The attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad a year and a half ago by Iranian backed militia made everyone over 55 remember the fate of Jimmy Carter, especially Donald Trump. He ordered the murder of General Soleimani after having rejected the idea days before.

The only two good things that Old Man Biden has done since becoming American president are continuing his predecessor's Chinese and Afghan policies. 

That should be obvious but to many is not. 

So many things should be obvious but are not these days.

I gave up social media a few days ago to get my life back and it worked.

I tried to keep away from the news too and the internet but somehow I am back on Twitter. 

I still looked up two or the twitterers on the net and there is one thinker there, whom I like very much, whose Twitter account is locked.

To read his tweets I returned just in time to see an avalanche of nonsense from British people dismayed that we are leaving Afghanistan.

Intelligent people like William Dalrymple and, inexcusably, many supposed conservatives.

What British interest would spending more blood and treasure in Afghanistan serve? What is the purpose of taxation?

People say that barbarians conquering a distant province of the empire remind them of something. 

They mean the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, of course. 

Civilisation is in grave danger, but not because girls in Afghanistan will no longer go to school.

Iran and Pakistan have helped the Taliban, according to Con Coughlin in the Sunday Telegraph, who I suspect always reproduces the MI6 line.

It is up to the Afghans to decide their fate and for their neighbours if need be to restrain them. 

England has no interest in the country or in anywhere in Asia.

The Taliban will not repeat their mistake of allowing the country to be used as a base for terrorists. The mission was accomplished long ago.

The Afghans do not want to be ruled by Christians or foreigners, something I easily understand, and now they will not be.