One of my favourite artists was the superb Victorian painter Lady Jane Butler, who captured in oil the triumphs and tragedies of the British Empire.
Her haunting painting, The Retreat from Kabul, shows the sole survivor of a British Army of 16,500, Dr William Brydon, struggling out of Afghanistan in January, 1842. All the rest were killed by the Afghan tribesmen after a futile attempt to garrison Kabul.
This gripping painting should have hung over the Nato Summit meeting last week in Chicago to remind the US and its allies that Afghanistan remains “the graveyard of empires.” The latest empire to try to conquer Afghanistan has failed, and is now sounding the retreat.
All the hot air in Chicago about “transition”, Afghan self-reliance and growing security could not conceal the truth that the mighty US and its dragooned Western allies have been beaten in Afghanistan by a bunch of mountain warriors from the 12th century.
The objective of war is to achieve political goals, not kill people. The US goal was to turn Afghanistan into a protectorate providing bases close to Caspian Basin oil, and to block China. After an 11-year war costing $1 trillion, this effort failed - meaning a military and political defeat.
The US dragged the Nato into a war in which it had no business and lacked any popular support. The result: a serious weakening of the Nato alliance, raising questions about whose interests it really serves. The defeat in Afghanistan will undermine US domination of Western Europe.
The claims made in Chicago that the US-installed Afghan regime will stand on its own with $4 billion of aid from the West were pie in the sky. Once the US support ends, the Karzai regime is unlikely to survive much longer than did Najibullah’s Afghan Communist regime in Kabul after its Soviet sponsor withdrew in 1989. Or the US-run South Vietnamese regime that fell in 1975.
The current 350,000-man Afghan government army and police are mercenaries fighting for money supplied by the US and Nato. Many are ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks, blood foes of the majority Pashtun. The Taliban and its allies are fighting for nationalism and faith. History tells us who will prevail.
All Afghans know the Western powers have been defeated. Those with sense are already making deals with the Taliban. Vengeance being a cherished Afghan custom, those who collaborated closely with the foreign forces can expect little mercy.
Air power is the key to US control of Afghanistan. The warplanes and helicopter gunships circle constantly overhead to defend Western bases and supply routes. Reduce this air power, as will likely happen after 2014, and the remaining US troops will be in peril. Pakistan’s temporary closure of the Nato land supply routes to Kabul and Kandahar provides a foretoken of what may occur. Currently, the US must rely on Russia for much of its heavy supplies.
Already there are worries about getting US and Nato troops out of Afghanistan.
France’s new President, François Hollande, wisely reaffirmed his pledge to withdraw all French troops this year. Other Nato members are wishing they could do the same. No one wants to have their soldiers be the last to die in a futile war that everyone knows is lost.
To wage and sustain the Afghan war, the US has been forced to virtually occupy Pakistan, bribe its high officials, and force Islamabad to follow policies hated by 95 percent of its people, generating virulent anti-Americanism. The Afghan war must be ended before it tears apart Pakistan and plunges South Asia into a crisis into which the nuclear-armed India is likely to become involved.
Washington intends to leave the garrisons in Afghanistan after the 2014 announced pull-out date, rebranding them “trainers” instead of combat troops. Their mission will be to keep the pro-US Afghan regime in power. But neither the US, nor the Nato will come up with the $4 billion promised in Chicago.
Washington is encouraging India to get ever more deeply involved in Afghanistan - even to become its new colonial power. India would be wise to keep its hands off.
In a second “Retreat from Kabul”, the remaining US garrisons in Afghanistan may face the fate of the 1842 British invaders, cut off, ambushed, and hacked to pieces by the ferocious Pashtun tribesmen.

n    The writer is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles appear in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Gulf Times, Khaleej Times and other news sites in Asia. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, Lew Rockwell and Big Eye. He appears as
    an expert on foreign affairs on CNN, BBC, France 2, France 24, Fox News, CTV and CBC.