Afghanistan and the West
The other day, I watched a blurry smartphone video made by a man who was clinging to the side of a military airplane as it took off. I don’t know the fate of the man, but it’s likely that he fell from the sky and died shortly afterward. He was “seeking a better life” in the West, but he ended his life as a meat pancake in his homeland. He had a marvel of modern technology in his hand, the smartphone, which gave him access to a vast store of knowledge. He could have just googled “Can you hang onto a plane?”. But I guess he never thought of that. Everyone interprets current events through their preferred narrative. The left will try to blame Trump for the US failure in Afghanistan, or perhaps George W. Bush. The right will blame Biden, or point to the long escalation under Obama. Reactionaries will talk about the futility of nation building, and maybe even cheer the Taliban as fellow enemies of the neoliberal global order. I have my own narrative, or frame, through which I interpret c