THE UNITED STATES SURRENDERS TO TALIBAN AND DELTA VARIANT

Why does the flagpole say, "Сделано в СССР?"

(Kabul, Afghanistan) - With the Taliban on the cusp of total victory in Afghanistan, the few US diplomats and soldiers are fleeing Kabul. The news comes as a shock to anyone who is completely ignorant of the region's history and the lessons of Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo III." With the deaths of nearly 2,500 US servicemen, more than 3,800 private contractors, and over 66,000 Afghan security forces, the grim reality is settling over those who are paying attention.

"It's incredibly tragic," says Dr. Raahi Ghulam Sakhi of Fortick University's Department of Afghanistan Studies. "Of course, when Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden made promises about the future of our country, we knew that they were just saying whatever they felt was politically expedient to get the public off of their backs. The truth of the matter is that you have a group of people who feel deep traditional and cultural connections to this place, and any invader will find it too inhospitable and remote to hold on for long. When they run out of reasons to stay, they will leave and the elements that are rooted here will return."

In similar fashion, the US has already abdicated responsibility for a tertiary wave of COVID-19 deaths, caused largely by a highly contagious variant, coupled with misinformation and denials with regard to vaccination and best practices with regard to masks and social distancing. After the alarming number of deaths this past winter, case numbers trended downwards in an encouraging fashion, so businesses and local governments rushed to reopen. Now, with daily infections reaching over 100,000, some politicians have taken the view that the variant has won and are pulling resources away from prevention.

"It's a classic move," says historian Fred Adagio, "This is Vietnam War era stuff. Just declare victory and go home. You know you can't win, so you just pretend you did. The history books - as long as there are some - are either going to drag us over the coals for this, or they're going to be written by such absurd revisionists that they're going to deny this ever happened. It's horrifying."