Contemplating the disastrous American retreat from Kabul, Eran Lerman addresses how it will affect the Middle East:

If the perception of an Islamist ascendancy takes hold, the implications for the region, and for the world, are liable to be profound. . . . The direct strategic impact of what happens in Afghanistan, landlocked between Pakistan, central Asia, and Iran, may be limited. [But] on the level of symbolism, namely the sense that “the arc of history” now bends towards Islamist victories, the imprint of the scenes from Kabul may be devastating. The consequence for regional stability could be severe; and vulnerable regimes may feel the need to cast their lot with the winners, or even to look to Iran for shelter.

As former U.S. allies are executed in a public way, and women are relegated back to servitude, the message to the rest of the Muslim world, and beyond it, could be quite dangerous. Has the West, and specifically the U.S., become what the prophet Isaiah called “a broken reed”?

Lerman goes on to suggest some damage-control measures:

To counter this impact as much as possible, it would be vital for the U.S. to demonstrate—elsewhere, since the Afghan case is clearly beyond salvation—that it is not a spent force. . . . Central to any such demonstration, given what we witnessed in Afghanistan, would be the way the U.S. deals with Iran’s defiant conduct.

One of the keys to the survival of the pro-Western forces in southeast Asia, after the fall of Saigon in 1975, had been their ability to come together—despite deep historical differences and grievances—in the form of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). It was created already in 1967 but was given its present form and functions only . . . in 1976; it was only during the mid-1990s, after the Soviet collapse, that Communist former enemies, including Vietnam, queued up to join it. To some extent, and despite the obvious differences, [ASEAN] can serve as a general template for those Middle East nations who fear the consequences of American retreat.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.