Is this the End of the American Empire?

Usually the government is in the business of hiding its failures. Hiding was impossible this time. [Gilder's Daily Prophecy] August 17, 2021 [UNSUBSCRIBE]( | [ARCHIVES]( The Unbelievable Secret Behind Crazy Stock Market Swings [Laptop]( computer hacker was on a mission: Find the market force driving investments up and down for no apparent reason. After hundreds of hours of coding, he found it — [a stock market glitch.]( what he discovered next was shocking… a clear signal, giving regular folks a chance to profit by simply… [(Click here to read more.)]( [Warning] Do you enjoy receiving Gilder's Daily Prophecy? Please [Click Here Now]( so we know to continue sending you Gilder's Daily Prophecy for free! Is this the End of the American Empire? [Jeffrey Tucker]Dear Daily Prophecy Reader, If the end of the US empire needed a bright and decisive marker, what happened this weekend provided exactly that. The news from Afghanistan presented the world an unbearably tragic picture. No matter the spin by the Biden administration, no matter what the talking heads say, no matter how many experts are there to assure people that this is not a failure, the humiliation for US foreign policy was on display as never before. Among the most shocking images were from the airport in Kabul, where thousands of Afghans swarmed the tarmac begging to board planes leaving the country. Some clung to the planes as they approached the runway. There are claims that a few people managed to hold onto the wings as the plane took off and then fell to their deaths. I’ve watched the film and cannot say if it is true, but the point remains. The whole scene gives new meaning to the word chaos, making even the 1975 exit from Saigon look orderly by comparison. There surely were better ways to end this mess, surely ways in which the US could have better protected its partisans on the ground, surely some path toward avoiding this calamity. The trouble is that the career diplomats and military professionals who might have mapped out a more realistic plan have suffered marginalization within the US government over several administrations. They are now wholly replaced by inexperienced but woke political players who have all the status within the Biden administration. The result was that anyone with a better plan was ignored while those with all the power had no clue what they were doing. Still, It was Inevitable The US entered Afghanistan in 2001, not just to punish the perpetrators of 9/11, though it was never established that the government had anything to do with funding or planning that attack. The decision to repeat the Soviet-style failure in that country was a decision by George W. Bush – one terrible decision among many made by this administration in its years in power (another was to plot lockdowns for disease containment). In quickly driving the Taliban to the hills, and declaring victory right away, the US adopted a more ambitiously ideological goal of reconstructing the country into a modern democratic republic. Surely the Midas touch of US military presence would achieve this. Talk about completely ignoring history! It’s not as if this failure could not be foreseen. Congressman Ron Paul famously predicted disaster but there were legions of commentators who knew what was coming. It was only a matter of time before the Taliban would come back. The US would expend lives and treasure on a futile mission, same as the Soviet and British empires before. Nothing could change this outcome. The US had to leave at some point. The Taliban would come back at some point. Rather than prepare and protect, the US bailed in a panic and merely allowed events to unfold with the people it had fought for 20 years regaining total hegemony in a matter of days. Twenty years of work and sacrifice disappeared like dust in the wind. [Will this weird device be in your home soon?]( An Easy Victory In all those years, the US claimed that the government in Afghanistan was not its puppet at all, but wholly legitimate and supported by the people. The tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with the foreign occupiers were not internally despised, but respected as agents of modernization. They were not vulnerable to being overthrown, but rather represented a bright and wholly Westernized vision of the future of the country. Those of us who had our doubts were routinely attacked as unpatriotic. Twenty years later, in a matter of one week, only a few months following the US announcement of withdrawal, the Taliban did an easy victory march straight to the capital of Kabul and inspired the quick surrender of hundreds of thousands of US-trained forces who saw the writing on the wall. Even as Biden promised to send thousands of more troops to achieve an orderly transition, the US embassy was quickly abandoned and the priority became getting aid workers, reporters, and US officials and their allies out as soon as possible. Usually the government is in the business of hiding its failure. Hiding was impossible this time. Biden administration officials were left sputtering on TV, blaming the Trump administration, claiming that this was a victory in disguise, and so on. But nothing could change the images of Taliban fighters reveling in victory all over the country, to the cheers of many people and the terror of many others. Even now, US officials are on TV explaining how they are working for an orderly transition when it should be clear that the deed was done. External Advertisement RIP Tesla (2003 - 2021?) [Is Tesla Dead?!]( Yahoo Finance is claiming that the next big thing is here. CNBC is saying this industry is an $8 trillion market opportunity. NPR is reporting that the government believes this will save money, time, and lives… And technology expert Lou Basenese just identified the ONE Silicon Valley startup that’s at the forefront of this massive trend that could put Tesla to bed... [Click here to watch Lou’s urgent presentation where he reveals all the details about this private company — including its name — for free.]( [No more banks. No more accountants. No more Wall Street?]( The Cost How much did 20 years of undeclared war cost? American troops killed: 2,448. Contractors killed: 3,846. Afghan military and police killed: 66,000. Civilians killed: 47,245. Taliban and resistance fighters killed: 51,191. Dead aid workers: 444. Dead journalists: 72. The debt cost of this fiasco certainly exceeds $2 trillion. There is a larger and more meaningful cost to the US government: the absolute humiliation that comes with total defeat. In many ways, what remains of the US military and economic empire rests on perceptions and history, the belief that most people have underestimated American strength for the better part of a century and they have generally been proven wrong. The disasters of the Korean and Vietnam Wars were eventually mitigated by victory in the Cold War. This time it is different. The loss of Afghanistan occurs following the calamity of the Iraq War, and is followed by nothing but the rise and rise of China as a global superpower. History has fundamentally changed, and global perceptions along with it. Loss of Control If one wants to isolate a single vice of the US government, it would be the lack of humility to admit that not everything can be controlled by economic and military might. The example of past failures in Afghanistan were available to everyone 20 years ago but this was widely ignored in favor of a messianic mission to achieve the impossible and control the uncontrollable. Where else do we see this? In every area of US government operations over the last 50 years. And with each overreach, each attempt to game the operations of the world with the expectation that sheer will could overcome all odds, the consequences become worse. Consider the 50-year anniversary of the end of the gold-exchange standard as orchestrated by the Nixon administration. It led not to the greatest monetary system in history but rather inflation, then price controls, then a devastation for the US dollar. There is more tragic poetry in that this Afghanistan humiliation comes amid undeniably rising prices in the US, about which all Americans are reminded every time they visit the grocery store or fill up a tank of gas. They turn on the TV to find Fed officials assuring them that everyone is ok. Yes, and last week, US officials were assuring people that the transition in Afghanistan would be smooth and orderly and wonderful. What are you worried about? Let’s also briefly mention another extreme failure of the Bush administration from those years. In 2005, he had the brilliant idea of using the power of the federal government to mitigate disease. The stay-at-home orders, the school and business closures, the attempt to suppress a virus by force, the travel restrictions – every bit of it was mapped out by 2005. The plans sat there mostly unnoticed until 2020 when they were deployed in ways that devastated American liberty. The same weekend that the Afghanistan disaster was shown on TV to the world, Fauci was on television telling Americans that they need to surrender more of their precious liberties in order to get the Delta variant under control. If there was ever a time in history for Americans finally to realize that they cannot trust their leaders to tell the truth, it is now. I spent the weekend in Washington, D.C., observing how people all over the city were dealing with all the new stringencies from the Biden administration. My overall impression is that the mask wearing and distancing are entirely performative at this point. Even bars had signs saying while you have to have your face covered to come in, you can take them off immediately because “we know this is dumb.” Americans pretend to comply with Covid rules just as the US-backed regime in Afghanistan pretended to rule the country. Behind all these spectacular events is a long-emerging reality: the slow but systematic decline of the American military and economic empire. It does not mean doom for us all but it does require a rethinking of the place of America in the global hierarchy. The last remaining “superpower” – before China can claim the title – has been revealed as a paper tiger, and no amount of partisan finger-pointing or clever statements from communication managers inside the government is going to change that. Regards, [Jeffrey Tucker] Jeffrey Tucker P.S. 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