{"id":35549,"date":"2021-08-20T16:00:28","date_gmt":"2021-08-20T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/20\/west-nation-building-fantasy-afghanistan-boris-johnson"},"modified":"2021-08-20T16:00:28","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T07:00:28","slug":"the-wests-nation-building-fantasy-is-to-blame-for-the-mess-in-afghanistan-simon-jenkins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=35549","title":{"rendered":"The west\u2019s nation-building fantasy is to blame for the mess in Afghanistan | Simon Jenkins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>British MPs have turned on Boris Johnson \u2013 but what tidy end did they expect from this imperialist experiment?<\/p>\n<p>Britain\u2019s MPs this week uttered <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2021\/aug\/18\/this-is-a-shame-on-all-of-us-british-mps-debate-the-fall-of-kabul\">one long howl of anguish<\/a> over Afghanistan. Their immediate targets were Joe Biden and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/aug\/18\/boris-johnson-defends-uk-afghanistan-policy-in-emergency-debate\">Boris Johnson<\/a>, politicians who just happened to be on the watch when Kabul\u2019s pack of cards collapsed. But their real concern was that a collective 20-year experiment in \u201cexporting western values\u201d to Afghanistan had fallen into chaos. MPs wanted someone other than themselves to blame. A politician is never so angry as when proved wrong.<\/p>\n<p> <span>Related: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/19\/afghanistan-crisis-britain-foreign-policy-delusional\">Even the crisis in Afghanistan can&#8217;t break the spell of Britain&#8217;s delusional foreign policy | Owen Jones<\/a> <\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2021\/aug\/20\/west-nation-building-fantasy-afghanistan-boris-johnson\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British MPs have turned on Boris Johnson \u2013 but what tidy end did they expect from this imperialist experiment?Britain\u2019s MPs this week uttered one long howl of anguish over Afghanistan. Their immediate targets were Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, politicia&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2095,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,4,61,44,52,47,631,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-politics","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban","category-uk-news","category-us-news","category-us-politics","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2095"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35550,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35549\/revisions\/35550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}