‘Our identity is turning to ashes’
| 'Our identity is turning to ashes'  Displaced Afghans arrive at a makeshift camp in Kabul on August 10, 2021.  At the end of the movie "Charlie Wilson's War," the eponymous main character is warned that the "crazies" just rolled into Kandahar -- and that the US would regret deserting Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. The scene, between Wilson, a hard-drinking Texas congressman played by Tom Hanks, and CIA case officer Gust Avrakotos, is pierced by the noise of a jet landing at Washington's National Airport -- a haunting reference to the hijacked plane attacks on September 11, 2001.
Now, the "crazies" have rolled into Kandahar again, and Washington insiders are asking the same question about what will happen once the US turns its back on Afghanistan. Even hawks who criticized President Joe Biden's decision to pull all troops from America's longest war have been shocked at the speed at which the Taliban, that once harbored Osama bin Laden, is snapping up territory. They see vindication for their position that the US should have stayed.
On Wednesday, the Taliban claimed to have freed 1,000 "criminal" prisoners in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city. Nine provincial capitals have fallen to the fundamentalist militia. More than 2,000 civilians have been killed since April. Western embassies are drawing down. It seems to be a case of when and not if Kabul eventually falls.
The growing disaster seems to support Biden's implicit argument that the US has failed to produce anything lasting in Afghanistan, despite the deaths and injuries of thousands of Americans, allies and local civilians, and the expenditure of more than a trillion dollars. Asked Tuesday if he would change his exit plan to head off a foreign policy humiliation for the United States, the President said no. "They've got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation … they've got to want to fight," he said -- a callous statement for the millions of Afghans now facing life under the Taliban's draconian rule. But this is Biden's cold-eyed judgment of his own country's interests.
History doesn't always repeat itself. Those who warn a Taliban return will eventually threaten the US could be drawing the wrong lessons. Terror groups that seek to attack the US could base themselves in any number of failed states. And can the President justify committing more lives to a failure that seeds blame through four presidential administrations? US and allied forces won the Afghan war in weeks in 2001 -- then spent the next 19 years losing the peace.
"These things happened, they were glorious and they changed the world," Wilson is quoted as saying at the end of the Hanks movie, in a reference to the Soviet defeat that seems prophetic today.
"Then we f**ked up the endgame." The world and America A German nurse allegedly swapped Covid-19 vaccine doses for saline solution.
Meanwhile in America, elementary school kids in Georgia were sent home due to Covid-19.
Hackers stole $600 million in cryptocurrency from a decentralized finance platform.
 'Our identity is turning to ashes' "We are losing our history, our identity is turning to ashes, our soul is burning," the mayor of Reggio Calabria, Giuseppe Falcomata, wrote on Facebook Wednesday, urging people to abandon their homes as wildfires sweep southern Italy. More than a hundred fires are currently active in the Calabria region alone, the "toe" of Italy's boot. Further south, the Sicilian town of Siracusa unofficially broke Europe's all-time heat record with 48.8°C (120°F) on Wednesday. The hottest temperature ever previously recorded in Europe was 48.0°C (118°F) in Athens, Greece in 1977. July 5th to August 9th  More than 98% of US residents now live in an area where there is a "high" or "substantial" risk of Covid-19 community transmission -- up from 19% of residents only a month ago, reports CNN's Priya Krishnakumar.
On Monday, 2,361 counties in the United States were listed in the "high" tier, a stark increase from 457 counties in the same tier at the beginning of July. Thanks for reading. On Thursday, the OECD releases its Economic Survey for Malaysia. Zambia holds presidential and legislative elections. View in browser | All CNN Newsletters
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