Biden’s speech on Afghanistan was a craven attempt to put a positive spin on moral cowardice.
If you want to see how hollowed-out America has become in the 21st century, you could do worse than listen to the speech Joe Biden made about Afghanistan yesterday. This will surely be viewed by future generations as one of the key documents of America’s modern malaise, as a blistering if unwitting insight into America’s retreat into the cults of safeyism, isolationism and fear. It was an extraordinary speech, though not for the reasons its naive cheerleaders in the anti-war movement claim. It was not a principled statement of America’s intention to wind down its regime-change wars, as they fantasise. Rather, it was a declaration of moral retreat, even of moral cowardice, cynically disguised as a clever act of political pragmatism.
