The Graveyard of Empires

I was 14 when Saigon fell, old enough to remember pictures of desperate people crawling over one another as they tried to reach American helicopters evacuating people from city rooftops when communist forces closed in.

I couldn’t help but recall those images as I watched what seemed like the same story unfold in Afghanistan over the weekend.

The parallels are similar. As the Taliban advanced on Kabul, increasing numbers of personnel that had assisted Americans in the region defected. As town after town was overrun by the Taliban, huge caches of American arms and equipment fell into enemy hands...