Eyeless in Gaza, the title of a novel by Aldous Huxley, based on a re-telling of the biblical Samson saga by Milton in his story Samson Agonistes, is for me a suitable analogy to the US in its current state, strong but blind.

Much has been written, and will be written, about the current retraction of the US into its accustomed isolationist posture. But, what are really the salient facts, not that Russia and China take comfort from the discomfiture of the US, but what are the real American losses. People complain that the US withdrew from Afghanistan, but that was inevitable, since both left and right in America were tired of the expenditure and failure to reap any tangible success after 20 years in Afghanistan (once Al Qaeda and ISIS had been defeated); that Pres. Biden gave a definite date for the withdrawal, but that was incidental; that the Afghan Army crumbled, not surprising to many well-informed experts; that the Taliban was able to take over the country and Kabul in 11 days, also not surprising to experts. No, what was truly astonishing was the willful blindness of the US Government!

A week before Afghanistan collapsed, Pres. Biden, with all the power and intelligence of the US Government at his disposal, stated publicly that the US had plenty of time to carry out an orderly withdrawal. This is the crucial problem, the blindness of the US President and government to the true situation. Being blind is as bad as being wrong or stupid. Was there no long-term planning, no consideration for all the Americans spread around Kabul and Afghanistan, no concern for the many thousands of Afghanis whose lives would be forfeit if they were not rescued in time by the US, no concern for the huge supplies of military equipment, hundreds of trucks and dozens of helicopters, that would fall into the hands of the Taliban and eventually who knows what other Islamist enemies. This was willful blindness, equivalent to total incompetence. And what other papers and secrets also fell into enemy hands?

It was also willful blindness that ignored the many indications and clues that surfaced before the attacks on 9/11, not only the first attack on the WTC that took place in 1993, but also the reports of suspicious Muslims taking flying lessons in the US (but not wanting to know how to land a plane), the reports of a possible attack emanating form Europe (Hamburg in fact), and the publicly stated commitment of Osama Bin Laden of a fatwa, (a Muslim religious ruling) that he was preparing to attack the US (that experts in terrorism took seriously). It is this willful blindness in the face of mounting evidence that constitutes the arrogance of power. Israel is not immune to this phenomenon, witness the apparent inability of the Head of Military Intelligence to see the blatant evidence of an Egyptian-Syrian attack on Yom Kippur 1973 that caught the IDF by surprise.

The lesson is that it makes no difference if you are strong, if you are unwilling to see the evidence before you. By withdrawing completely from the whole Middle East region, the US has now made itself complicit in its blindness. And trying to make a deal with a terrorist state like Iran, while it is actively enriching uranium and building a nuclear weapon, is self-delusion in the extreme. Remember, the only option left for blind but strong Samson was to bring the whole house down with him.