Paola Sacchi’s interview with Maria Giovanna Maglie, writer, journalist, foreign expert, on Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and beyond
“After telling that President Donald Trump was deranged and the arrival of Joe Biden as the miracle of the regained democracy, it is now very difficult for them to recognize the clownish spectacle offered by the president of the United States. But I am confident that this and other blows will awaken the American system which is infinitely more solid than ours. In Europe, no, I have no confidence ”.
In this interview for Start Magazine, Maria Giovanna Maglie, journalist, writer, columnist, and a long-time foreign correspondent speaks about the disaster in Afghanistan, the withdrawal of troops initiated by Barack Obama, the “disaster of the Dem politics”.You reiterated on TV that Trump in the Doha agreements had also made a further, particular form of training for Afghan troops a condition. But Biden with the withdrawal, marked by disastrous modalities and times, from Kabul has then dismantled everything. Yet in the mainstream press a huge cauldron continues to be made by putting Trump’s mistakes, although there may have been, on the same level as those of Biden. What is his opinion
Unfortunately, the answer is simple. If you have been telling for years that President Trump was deranged and Biden’s arrival as the miracle of democracy finally regained, recognizing the clownish spectacle offered by the President of the United States is very difficult. We might as well resort to conspiracy. Nobody had the courage to go beyond a bland and generic condemnation, the usual anti-Americanism of manner. But the disaster of the United States, the Democratic Party and the ee will remain there for all to see for months. I think only of the massacre at the airport, the president’s lies that Al Qaeda had been completely eliminated from the territory, the other lie that the allies had been warned and agreed, finally the last one according to which the Americans were all safe outside Afghanistan. I think of the people left behind who will be slaughtered for collaborating with the West, the deplorable spectacle of combat helicopters, weapons, uniforms, in the hands of a horde of uncivilized savage murderers persecuting women. But also of men because the Taliban and their law, the sharia, also affect those who think they believe it.Trump perhaps had to tighten the Doha agreements or perhaps decide that it should have remained a permanent military presence anyway, as Condoleezza Rice said.
Shooting on Donald Trump and accusing him of all wrongdoing has now objectively become more difficult. The Doha agreements were obligatory after Barack Obama’s progressive massive withdrawal of American military forces and after his reckless overtures to Iran and totally wrong politics in Syria. But I challenge anyone to argue that President Trump would have left hundreds of Americans in Afghanistan to hurry up and obey the agreements made with the Taliban to withdraw by August 31st. I challenge him to argue that Donald Trump would have left valuable American weapons in the hands of the Taliban. Finally, I challenge you to argue that if it had been used all the time until 9/11 to train with 23,000 contractors, as stipulated in the agreement, the Afghan military, things would have gone the same way. That was what the Doha accords said and the funds were cut by Biden. And they also said that nothing would be final before a negotiation and compromise table between the regular government and the Taliban. Not to mention that the policy initiated with the Abrantes agreements had opened completely new and different relations between Israel and some Arab nations, isolated Iran, so the network of negotiations would have had a very different outcome, not the current catastrophe.The mainstream of our house always exalts the US Dems. But it is not possible, for example, to at least understand what happened between the Obama-Biden ticket, with which I begin the withdrawal, and the first interim prime minister, after 11 September, then the first elected president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai , on excellent terms with Bush junior. Afghanistan has disappeared from the news radars for years. What happened, according to his reconstructions
A war to restore democracy needs a lot of military engagement and a great deal of civil partnership for decades. Twenty years is nothing, not when already from the last part of the Bush Presidency there is a great weakness, one yields to internal public opinion and to lack of international collaboration, indeed hostility. As soon as Obama was elected, the opening speech in Cairo to Islamic fundamentalist theocracies began to give the final blow to Afghanistan together with the retreat. The various governments, including that of Karzai, which to look at it today naturally looks like a paradise, have done nothing to fight corruption. The Europeans limited themselves to bringing magistrates, teachers, traffic and traffic experts, but they never fought, on the contrary, they have always shown annoyance with the use of weapons. From a certain point on, these missions seemed like rewards to brilliant officials who were there for a year at most and then come back and be replaced, and so they never managed to establish a true relationship with the people they had to teach something. It is a real shame, given that 53 Italian soldiers died, ignored.Professor Marcello Pera, former president of the Senate, in our interview for Start Magazine, said that the West should have listened to Karzai more, according to whom it would have taken more time to change the situation of women as well. What do you think?
As I just said, to counter a tribal movement steeped in ignorance, fundamentalism, devoid of any open-minded, ferocious, it takes decades of maximum military commitment accompanied by maximum civil commitment and a merciless fight against corruption. It was not a question of exporting democracy, a definition which in any case does not cause me any scandal, but of restoring it. I invite you to look for and look at the images of Afghanistan less than a century ago, populated by free women and graduates.Prime Minister Draghi is aiming at the G20 with dialogue also with Russia and China, but Biden has also received the Taliban no to an extension compared to August 31 for the evacuation from the airport. What results could the G20 bring?
Biden did worse, he decided to stick to the August 31 deal, not caring what he was leaving behind. A bit like Italy did, forgetting about 80 students of the La Sapienza University of Rome. We will see what Mario Draghi will be able to obtain from an enlarged G20 with an interlocutor who in any case is a protagonist, but is also as inadequate as Joe Biden. Foreign policy is not like finance, it is an ugly beast and it takes great political competence and great human passion.Pera denounced, again in this newspaper, the surrender of the West, which “no longer believes in itself”, a West “now more at risk also of dictatorships and growing Chinese hegemony”. A risk that of China on which you wrote the book “The Chinese monster” (Piemme). In the end, the Kabul epilogue is not much, much more disastrous than that of Saigon
I do not believe in the equation between the war lost and fought in Vietnam and the one left halfway through and ended in an ignominious retreat. The United States emerges weakened compared to its historical adversaries, China first and then Russia, which however does not have the same level of danger. This weakness will affect future crises. As for China, for now and above all an overbearing, despotic commercial power, I am referring abroad, certainly not the horrible grip and non-respect for daily human rights that is consumed within that nation. You took advantage of a devastating pandemic to buy yourself pieces of Europe. Now he thinks you will have a win and a free hand in Taiwan. I am confident that this and other blows will awaken the American system which is infinitely more solid than ours, and that Woke’s last years, cancel culture, MeToo, are put aside together with the success of a Democratic Party now at the mercy of the extremists. Not Europe, Europe has an ancient suicidal vocation lulled by non-existent civil rights, by exasperated pacifism, by phony ecologisms, by a sense of masochistic welcome, and all this is tragically accompanied by a directing temptation that the response to the pandemic has highlighted in an exemplary way. Good politics, which still exists, must have a strong push, free itself from subjection to technocrats, of all kinds and kinds, from European to local, and try to make the reforms that put you back on the right track. Last stop. Europe has an ancient suicidal vocation lulled by non-existent civil rights, exasperated pacifism, phony ecologisms, a sense of masochistic welcome, and all this is tragically accompanied by a dirigiste temptation that the response to the pandemic has highlighted in an exemplary way. Good politics, which still exists, must have a strong push, free itself from subjection to technocrats, of all kinds and kinds, from European to local, and try to make the reforms that put you back on the right track. Last stop. Europe has an ancient suicidal vocation lulled by non-existent civil rights, exasperated pacifism, phony ecologisms, a sense of masochistic welcome, and all this is tragically accompanied by a dirigiste temptation that the response to the pandemic has highlighted in an exemplary way. Good politics, which still exists, must have a strong push, free itself from subjection to technocrats, of all kinds and kinds, from European to local, and try to make the reforms that put you back on the right track. Last stop. Good politics, which still exists, must have a strong push, free itself from subjection to technocrats, of all kinds and kinds, from European to local, and try to make the reforms that put you back on the right track. Last stop. Good politics, which still exists, must have a strong push, free itself from subjection to technocrats, of all kinds and kinds, from European to local, and try to make the reforms that put you back on the right track. Last stop.
