Limits

President Biden’s decision to withdraw forces from Afghanistan is – as when Saigon fell to Vietnamese forces – a sign of failure. Meaning, even the state with the strongest economic, technological and military power is not an unlimited force.

Goenawan Mohamad

September 6, 2021

TWENTY years ago on September 11, 2001, I gazed at the clear sky of that Tuesday morning from a hotel room in Manhattan, New York. Not for long. Towards nine o’clock, it went murky.

A Boeing 767 had struck the 80th floor of the northern tower of the soaring World Trade Center. Seventeen minutes later, another plane crashed into the southern tower. The Twin Towers eventually collapsed. Thousands there that morning died. Something unima

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