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The war on terror is, was and will be a veil for imperialist expansion
The seeds of the disintegration of the West’s occupation of Afghanistan lay in its ham-fisted and self-serving character, writes KEVIN OVENDEN
Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg adjusts his face mask during a Nato foreign ministers' video meeting following developments in Afghanistan

THERAPISTS of the mind often try to trace pathological delusions back to repressed trauma.

Both the trauma, and the delusions arising from an unhealthy refusal to ackowledge it, were on display in the House of Commons this week. The emergency sitting to discuss the Afghanistan crisis was a portrait of a governing class in decline and denial.

First, the trauma. The scale, speed and chaos of the collapse of the Western presence and of its preferred government in Afghanistan have produced a profound shock throughout the governing classes of the Nato states. All of them. “The West’s Shipwreck In Afghanistan” splashed the Greek equivalent of the Times.

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