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A failure of Western thinking

To hang the Afghanistan fiasco on Joe Biden is worse than unfair, it is unintelligent (“Biden’s debacle”, August 21st). Unfair, because it was foreseen by so many that the Afghanistan issue would end in a mess. Unintelligent, because the true sources of this disaster are neither political nor military, they are philosophical. Western thinking, shared by Europeans and Americans, is conditioned on Enlightenment thinking, which is centred on the improvement of the individual. Contrary to what was and is still thought by many of its doyens, this hardly helps one understand societies.

The consequent Western penchant for social tinkering, besides being arrogant, has not only failed to achieve its goals but has also resulted in a long list of social and political tragedies, such as communism in Russia and elsewhere, or the American state-building initiatives, in Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan.

PROFESSOR EVYATAR FRIESEL
Hebrew University of...