THE best place to read the mind of a country is in Parliament. And so Britain self-righteously revealed itself there on Wednesday morning.
In a hastily called parliamentary session to address the fall of Kabul, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was all of unrepentant Tony Blair: "We must help the people of Afghanistan choose the best of all possible futures." Blair's House of Commons speech initiating the Afghan war 20 years ago wasn't much different.
There the former prime minister had delusions of Afghans pleading for British and American help. Or so he wanted the British Parliament to believe.
The reality is, as pointed out by Simon Jenkins, a columnist with The Guardian, Afghans are screaming: "Leave our country alone. You have conquered us, ruled us, corrupted us, consumed our opium and are now removing 20,000 of our brightest and best. For goodness sake, just leave us alone."
Like Blair, Johnson is saying the future isn't for the Afghans to determine, but for the British to manipulate. And part of his "Global Britain" plan, a rehashing of "The Great Game" of the 19th century no doubt, is to get the Group of Seven (G7) countries and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) to shape an Afghan future the West wants.
It is never about people; it's always about power. Never mind if it failed repeatedly several times in three centuries, not only in Afghanistan, but in Africa and the Middle East.
Johnson will do well to take Winston Churchill's advice: "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it". Twenty years later, neither Britain nor Blair has changed. He may have lost the power to marshal an army, but the savage interventionist in him is still a raging fire.
Writing a we-did-this-we-did-that opinion piece in the New Statesman, he says leaving Afghanistan is "a betrayal of our values".
An echo of the words of former American president George W. Bush? Little wonder, Jenkins calls him "the lap dog trotting at American heels". We could not have put it better.
Bush was looking for an excuse to invade Afghanistan and Blair conveniently invented one. Not once, but twice. For a man who goaded Nato into sending 130,000 troops there to kill and be killed, he shows no remorse.
Britain must hold him accountable. Johnson, too, should stop goading Nato like Blair did. Instead, he must pay heed to the words of his own Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Nick Carter.
Speaking to Sky News UK last week, he had a piece of advice for the world: do not be quick to call the Taliban enemies. They have changed. He is right. Enemies won't keep watch to enable smooth evacuation.
Enemies won't lend a helping hand. The West needs to understand who the Taliban really are. Twenty years of boots on the ground should have taught the invaders this, but judging from the debate in the Commons on Wednesday, it appears that Britain just doesn't get it.
The Taliban, in Carter's words, are a disparate collection of tribes people, who happen to live by a code of honour and standard.
Governance is important to them as it is to the West, only that the Taliban apply different rules.
Western lenses aren't the only ones to look at the world. The Earth is big enough for more than one world view.