Finnish president states the obvious: The export of US democracy has failed
Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said the Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan was due to the failure of the West to secure their trademark export, that of democratic government and society in the country. And French commentators likened Afghanistan to the "Graveyard of Empires", a sobriquet associated with the country.
Published: August 17, 2021, 1:32 pm
Niinistö told Finnish outlet Yle that the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan will likely create another wave of migrants coming to Europe and create a safe haven for terrorists. Indeed, the US fiasco sadly highlights the long list of such failures in Iraq, Libya, Syria, North Korea and Ukraine.
In fact, the Biden administration will probably be remembered for creating a Islamic Caliphate in Afghanistan, armed with free US military equipment, after abandoning the country. Biden has meanwhile appeared to be much more concerned about silencing Trump supporters and critics of his Covid policies while enjoying a vacation as the stated American war effort in Afghanistan imploded.
“The lesson we must learn from this is that it is quite difficult to introduce a completely new social structure and social thinking to another place. It takes many generations”, Niinistö said in an interview with the national broadcaster.
The consequence of the US failure in Afghanistan – after the longest war in its history – will be a flood of migrants heading for the EU. Mainstream European leaders, especially in France and Germany, realise that a fresh influx could seriously damage their prospects of being re-elected, since the welcoming mood in the EU has changed. “So we must take a stand on the question of how many refugees Finland and Europe can receive so that good integration can be achieved”, Niinistö said.
Niinistö pointed out that the Taliban, during their previous reign, had been content with staying in Afghanistan, “but at the same time had offered terrorists a shelter”. He said that if “the same line continues, the effect can radiate across the globe”.
French politician Philippe de Villiers and René Cagnat, specialist on Afghanistan, told Russian outlet Sputnik that this “withdrawal demonstrated the bankruptcy of America, the bankruptcy of France in following America, the bankruptcy of NATO, and the bankruptcy of France in NATO”.
“What has just happened is the starting point of the decline of American power,” de Villiers noted. He said American hegemony would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union did after its Afghan debacle in the 1980s. The long and costly war that had led Moscow against the Washington-backed Mujahedin had contributed to the fall of the USSR and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.
Former French diplomat René Cagnat, a specialist in Central Asia, agreed with De Villiers. “Afghanistan is a cemetery for American power, as it was for the USSR”. What is happening in Afghanistan “is serious for the Americans”. He added: “Their departure lacks dignity.”
“Americans, like any people, have a sense of dignity and that they might not forgive Biden for it. From there, we could see a bad influence of the Afghan disaster in America itself, the Americans losing confidence in themselves,” he warned.

The rise of the Taliban: Operation Cyclone was the code name for the CIA programme to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The mujahideen were also supported by Britain’s MI6, who conducted separate covert actions. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups, including groups with jihadist ties. President Ronald Reagan meeting with Afghan Mujahideen leaders in the Oval Office in 1983. Wikipedia
This war was indeed the longest in the history of the United States since the birth of the country in 1776. In total, the totally futile wars launched in the wake of September 11 will have cost 2 trillion dollars in twenty years, but the overall costs it generated will continue to burden the US. It is estimated that the cost of injuries, pensions and other expenses related to the US mission in Afghanistan will mean total expenses of $6,5 trillion in 2050, according to Marketwatch.
These are truly astronomical sums without Washington being able to show anything whatsoever for their trouble. Quite the contrary, because the US defeat has spurned the revival of Islamic radicals. “ISIS will profit from the triumph of the Taliban,” Arab media warned, according to the Courrier international. The victory of the Taliban constitutes “a vicious boost” for radical Islam.
According to the French specialist on the Afghan conflict, the French had understood soon enough that the Afghans, weary of the war, were “more fed up with us Westerners than the Taliban and that’s saying something”.
“The United States did not understand a thing. They displayed their strategic, tactical, logistical ineptitude. They missed the mark. They don’t know how to wage war now. They did not understand that their model of warfare should have been changed,” the specialist on Central Asia underscored.
Cagnat’s summary was shared by French veterans. “When you see these images of Kabul, it is deeply sad for the Afghan people. It hasn’t budged. It’s really sad that the Afghans are going back to square one,” a veteran French soldier, Antoine Daoust, remarked.
The news of the political earthquake was not welcomed by the family of a French soldier who had died in Afghanistan either. “They died for nothing,” the father of a French soldier killed in the war told France Bleu La Rochelle. “I have always said that our soldiers, the 89 French soldiers, had died for nothing. I confirm, they died for nothing and nor did the 3 or 4000 Americans, nor all the NATO soldiers who died.”
The father of the tragically killed soldier condemned the French intervention in Afghanistan as a “catastrophic mission”.
A 2013 study by the Pew Reasearch Center revealed that 99 percent of the 38 million Afghans agree to Sharia law – the highest figure among Islamic countries in South and Southeast Asia.
AfD member of the Bundestag and Bundeswehr reserve officer, Gerold Otten, said the hostility that had prevailed on the part of large sections of the population towards the Bundeswehr and the other allied forces in Afghanistan. Religion is a huge binding factor there, and the “unbelievers” are the enemy. This bare fact was stubbornly ignored during the 20-year NATO mission, he said. With 59 dead Bundeswehr soldiers and tens of billions of wasted German taxpayers’ money, this has been completely in vain, Otten added. He spoke on July 25 at an AfD event in Unterschleissheim, well before images of the US disaster began circulating on social media.
All rights reserved. You have permission to quote freely from the articles provided that the source (www.freewestmedia.com) is given. Photos may not be used without our consent.
Consider donating to support our work
Help us to produce more articles like this. FreeWestMedia is depending on donations from our readers to keep going. With your help, we expose the mainstream fake news agenda.
Keep your language polite. Readers from many different countries visit and contribute to Free West Media and we must therefore obey the rules in, for example, Germany. Illegal content will be deleted.
If you have been approved to post comments without preview from FWM, you are responsible for violations of any law. This means that FWM may be forced to cooperate with authorities in a possible crime investigation.
If your comments are subject to preview by FWM, please be patient. We continually review comments but depending on the time of day it can take up to several hours before your comment is reviewed.
We reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, contain slander or foul language, or are irrelevant to the discussion.

Care prompts bishops to criticize transgender ideology
The Catholic bishops of the Scandinavian countries presented an open five-page letter criticizing transgender ideology on March 21, just before Easter. The document primarily expresses care and advice and was read aloud in Catholic churches in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland. Cardinal Anders Arborelius, Bishop of Stockholm, is one of the signatories of the document.

Brits Forced to Live in Darkness and Cold
Food prices are rising at a furious pace, fastest in Scotland in almost half a century. At the same time, energy prices are at record highs. People are forced to choose between freezing or going hungry, and a majority of Scots are forced to live in cold and darkness to cope with bills. Old generations' tricks for saving and keeping warm are returning. Nevertheless, it is feared that 10,000 Brits will die of cold homes this winter. We present the Swedish Public Health Agency's guidelines on indoor temperature. Governments in Europe are introducing rationing and monitoring of food purchases. Net-zero emissions are a lie that, in practice, de-industrializes the West and dramatically lowers our standard of living.

Thousands of Flemish farmers block roads in Brussels against nitrogen policy
BrusselsMore than 2500 farmers from Belgium's Dutch-speaking Flanders region gathered at Brussels' central Arts-Loi street and blocked roads with tractors toward Brussels to protest the regional government's plan to limit nitrogen emissions.

Orban: EU energy sanctions costing citizens billions
BudapestHungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has warned that some western states could soon send troops to Ukraine. He also criticized the fact that the EU sanctions against Russia had cost Hungarian taxpayers tens of billions of euros.

Italy: New leader of the Social Democrats is one of Soros’ ‘preferred politicians’
RomeDuring the election campaign, Elly Schlein presented herself as the standard-bearer of the poorest. However, her background and previous work raise doubts about her honesty.

UK greenhouses shut down due to high energy costs
LondonIn Great Britain, a particularly depressing facet of the crisis is now showing its first contours - and thus anticipating what is likely to happen in other European countries in the near future: because of the exploding energy prices, agriculture is being strangled and fresh produce has to be rationed.

Lisbon opens borders to all Portuguese speakers
LisbonNot only the German and Italian governments keep opening new paths for immigration. Portugal, too, has opened a Pandora's box and is paving the way for possibly millions of non-European immigrants to the EU – something which is not mentioned by the mainstream media.

Illegal immigration to Italy has reached its highest level ever
RomeIn Italy, despite the overwhelming right-wing electoral success in September, there is still nothing to be seen of the promised asylum turnaround – on the contrary. Giorgia Meloni has been in office for five months, but the arrivals of migrants in Italy have doubled compared to the previous year.

Dismantling diplomacy with ‘feminist foreign policy’
BudapestGerman Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) wants to counter German security issues abroad with feminist politics. Gender training, LGBTQ events and quotas are now part of their new guidelines, which are intended to bring about "cultural change". The German ambassador to Hungary, Julia Gross, provided an embarrassing example.

Germans demand investigation of Nord Stream sabotage
BerlinAfter the sensational revelations by US investigative reporter Seymour Hersh about the perpetrators of the Nord Stream attacks on September 26, 2022, the German government has remained silent. It does not want to comment on Hersh's research results, according to which the pipelines were blown up by Americans and Norwegians.